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A NEW  CONSCIENCE 
AND  AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  • BOSTON  • CHICAGO 
DALLAS  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  & CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  ‘ BOMBAY  • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


A 

NEW  CONSCIENCE 

AND  AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


JANE  ADDAMS 


HULL  HOUSE,  CHICAGO 

\^Avihor  of  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace 
The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets 
Twenty  Years  at  Hull-House 


^orfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


1912 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  igii  and  1912 

By  the  S.  S.  McClure  Compa»jy  and  the  McClure  Pubucations,  Inc. 
Copyright,  1912 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.  Published  April,  1912 


J.  J.  Little  & Ives  Co.,  Printers,  New  York 


To  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  of  Chica- 
go, whose  superintendent  and  field  officers  have 
collected  much  of  the  material  for  this  book,  and 
whose  president,  Mrs.  Joseph  T.  Bowen,  has 
so  ably  and  sympathetically  collaborated  in  its 
writing. 


CONTENTS 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  REGARD  TO  AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


CHAPTER  I PAGE 

As  inferred  from  An  Analogy 3 

CHAPTER  II 

As  indicated  by  Recent  Legal  Enactments  ....  17 
CHAPTER  III 


As  indicated  by  the  Amelioration  of  Economic  Con- 
ditions   55 

CHAPTER  IV 

As  indicated  by  the  Moral  Education  and  Legal  Pro- 
tection of  Children 97 

CHAPTER  V 

As  indicated  by  Philanthropic  Rescue  and  Prevention  141 
CHAPTER  VI 

As  indicated  by  Increased  Social  Control  ....  179 


PREFACE 


The  following  material,  much  of  which  has 
been  published  in  McClure’s  Magazine,  was 
written,  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  expert, 
but  because  of  my  own  need  for  a counter-knowl- 
edge to  a bewildering  mass  of  information  which 
came  to  me  through  the  Juvenile  Protective 
Association  of  Chicago.  The  reports  which  its 
twenty  field  officers  daily  brought  to  its  main 
office  adjoining  Hull  House  became  to  me  a 
revelation  of  the  dangers  implicit  in  city  condi- 
tions and  of  the  allurements  which  are  designedly 
placed  around  many  young  girls  in  order  to  draw 
them  into  an  evil  life. 

As  head  of  the  Publication  Committee,  I read 
the  original  documents  in  a series  of  special 
investigations  made  by  the  Association  on  dance 
halls,  theatres,  amusement  parks,  lake  excursion 
boats,  petty  gambling,  the  home  surroundings  of 
one  hundred  Juvenile  Court  children  and  the 
records  of  four  thousand  parents  who  clearly 
contributed  to  the  delinquency  of  their  own  fami- 


IX 


PREFACE 


lies.  The  Associatior/also  collected  the  personal 
histories  of  two  hundred  department-store  girls, 
of  two  hundred  factory  girls,  of  two  hundred 
immigrant  girls,  of  two  hundred  office  girls,  and 
of  girls  employed  in  one  hundred  hotels  and 
restaurants. 

While  this  experience  was  most  distressing,  I 
was,  on  the  other  hand,  much  impressed  and  at 
times  fairly  startled  by  the  large  and  diversi- 
fied number  of  people  to  whom  the  very  existence 
of  the  white  slave  traffic  had  become  unen- 
durable and  who  promptly  responded  to  any 
appeal  made  on  behalf  of  its  victims.  City  offi- 
cials, policemen,  judges,  attorneys,  employers, 
trades  unionists,  physicians,  teachers,  newly  ar- 
rived immigrants,  clergjmen,  railway  officials, 
and  newspaper  men,  as  under  a profound  sense  of 
compunction,  were  unsparing  of  time  and  effort 
when  given  an  opportunity  to  assist  an  individual 
girl,  to  promote  legislation  designed  for  her  pro- 
tection, or  to  establish  institutions  for  her  rescue. 

I therefore  venture  to  hope  that  in  serving  mj”^ 
own  need  I may  also  serve  the  need  of  a rapidly 
growing  public  when  I set  down  for  rational 
consideration  the  temptations  surrounding  multi- 


X 


PREFACE 


tudes  of  young  people  and  when  I assemble,  as 
best  I may,  the  many  indications  of  a new  con- 
science, which  in  various  directions  is  slowly 
gathering  strength  and  which  we  may  soberly 
hope  will  at  last  successfully  array  itself  against 
this  incredible  social  wrong,  ancient  though  it 
may  be. 

Hull  House, 

Chicago. 


♦ 


AN  ANALOGY 


. , A., 


CHAPTER  I 


AN  ANALOGY 

In  every  large  city  throughout  the  world 
thousands  of  women  are  so  set  aside  as  outcasts 
from  decent  society  that  it  is  considered  an  im- 
propriety to  speak  the  very  word  which  designates 
them.  Lecky  calls  this  type  of  woman  “the 
most  mournful  and  the  most  awful  figure  in 
history”:  he  says  that  “she  remains,  while  creeds 
and  civilizations  rise  and  fall,  the  eternal  sacri- 
fice of  humanity,  blasted  for  the  sins  of  the  peo- 
ple.” But  evils  so  old  that  they  are  imbedded 
in  man’s  earliest  history  have  been  known  to 
sway  before  an  enlightened  public  opinion  and  in 
the  end  to  give  way  to  a growing  conscience, 
which  regards  them  first  as  a moral  affront  and 
at  length  as  an  utter  impossibility.  Thus  the 
generation  just  before  us,  our  own  fathers,  up- 
rooted the  enormous  upas  of  slavery,  “the  tree 
that  was  literally  as  old  as  the  race  of  man,” 
although  slavery  doubtless  had  its  beginnings  in 


4 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


the  captives  of  man’s  earliest  warfare,  even  as 
this  existing  evil  thus  originated. 

Those  of  us  who  think  we  discern  the  beginnings 
of  a new  conscience  in  regard  to  this  twin  of 
slavery,  as  old  and  outrageous  as  slavery  itself 
and  even  more  persistent,  find  a possible  analogy 
between  certain  civic,  philanthropic  and  educa- 
tional efforts  directed  against  the  very  existence 
of  this  social  evil  and  similar  organized  efforts 
which  preceded  the  overthrow  of  slavery  in  Amer- 
ica. Thus,  long  before  slavery  was  finally  de- 
clared illegal,  there  were  international  regulations 
of  its  traflSc,  state  and  federal  legislation  concern- 
ing its  extension,  and  many  extra  legal  attempts 
to  control  its  abuses;  quite  as  we  have  the  inter- 
national regulations  concerning  the  white  slave 
traffic,  the  state  and  interstate  legislation  for 
its  repression,  and  an  extra  legal  power  in  con- 
nection with  it  so  universally  given  to  the  munic- 
ipal police  that  the  possession  of  this  power  has 
become  one  of  the  great  sources  of  corruption 
in  every  American  city. 

Before  society  was  ready  to  proceed  against 
the  institution  of  slavery  as  such,  groups  of  men 
and  women  by  means  of  the  underground  rail- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


5 


road  cherished  and  educated  individual  slaves;  it 
is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  the  similarity 
to  the  rescue  homes  and  preventive  associations 
which  every  great  city  contains. 

It  is  always  easy  to  overwork  an  analogy,  and 
yet  the  economist  who  for  years  insisted  that 
slave  labor  continually  and  arbitrarily  limited 
the  wages  of  free  labor  and  was  therefore  a detri- 
ment to  national  wealth  was  a forerunner  of  the 
economist  of  to-day  who  points  out  the  economic 
basis  of  the  social  evil,  the  cormection  between 
low  wages  and  despair,  between  over-fatigue  and 
the  demand  for  reckless  pleasure. 

Before  the  American  nation  agreed  to  regard 
slavery  as  unjustifiable  from  the  standpoint  of 
public  morality,  an  army  of  reformers,  lecturers, 
and  writers  set  forth  its  enormity  in  a never- 
ceasing  flow  of  invective,  of  appeal,  and  of  por- 
trayal concerning  the  human  cruelty  to  which 
the  system  lent  itself.  We  can  discern  the  scouts 
and  outposts  of  a similar  army  advancing  against 
this  existing  evil:  the  physicians  and  sanitarians 
who  are  committed  to  the  task  of  ridding  the 
race  from  contagious  diseases,  the  teachers  and 
lecturers  who  are  appealing  to  the  higher  morality 


6 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  ANT) 


of  thousands  of  young  people;  the  grooving  lit- 
erature, not  only  biological  and  didactic,  but  of 
a popular  type  more  closely  approaching  “Uncle 
Tom’s  Cabin.” 

Throughout  the  agitation  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  America,  there  were  statesmen  who 
gradually  became  convinced  of  the  political  and 
moral  necessity  of  giving  to  the  freedman  the 
protection  of  the  ballot.  In  this  current  agita- 
tion there  are  at  least  a few  men  and  women  who 
would  extend  a greater  social  and  political  free- 
dom to  all  women  if  only  because  domestic  con- 
trol has  proved  so  ineffectual. 

We  may  certainly  take  courage  from  the  fact 
that  our  contemporaries  are  fired  by  social  com- 
passions and  enthusiasms,  to  which  even  our 
immediate  predecessors  were  indifferent.  Such 
compunctions  have  ever  manifested  themselves 
in  varying  degrees  of  ardor  through  different 
groups  in  the  same  community.  Thus  among 
those  who  are  newly  aroused  to  action  in  regard 
to  the  social  evil  are  many  who  would  endeavor 
to  regulate  it  and  believe  they  can  minimize  its 
dangers,  still  larger  numbers  who  would  ehminate 
all  trafficking  of  unwilling  victims  in  connection 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


7 


with  it,  and  yet  others  who  believe  that  as  a 
quasi-legal  institution  it  may  be  absolutely 
abolished.  Perhaps  the  analogy  to  the  abohtion 
of  slavery  is  most  striking  in  that  these  groups, 
in  their  varying  points  of  view,  are  like  those 
earlier  associations  which  differed  widely  in  re- 
gard to  chattel  slavery.  Only  the  so-called  ex- 
tremists, in  the  first  instance,  stood  for  abolition 
and  they  were  continually  told  that  what  they 
proposed  was  clearly  impossible.  The  legal 
and  commercial  obstacles,  bulked  large,  were 
placed  before  them  and  it  was  confidently  as- 
serted that  the  blame  for  the  historic  existence 
of  slavery  lay  deep  within  human  nature  itself. 
Yet  gradually  all  of  these  associations  reached 
the  point  of  view  of  the  abolitionist  and  before 
the  war  was  over  even  the  most  lukewarm  union- 
ist saw  no  other  solution  of  the  nation’s  difficulty. 
Some  such  gradual  conversion  to  the  point  of 
view  of  abolition  is  the  experience  of  every  society 
or  group  of  people  who  seriously  face  the  difficul- 
ties and  complications  of  the  social  evil.  Certainly 
all  the  national  organizations — the  National 
Vigilance  Committee,  the  American  Purity  Fed- 
eration, the  Alliance  for  the  Suppression  and 


8 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Prevention  of  the  White  Slave  Traffic  and  many 
others — stand  for  the  final  abolition  of  commer- 
cialized vice.  Local  vice  commissions,  such  as  the 
able  one  recently  appointed  in  Chicago,  although 
composed  of  members  of  varying  beliefs  in  regard 
to  the  possibility  of  control  and  regulation,  united 
in  the  end  in  recommending  a law  enforcement 
looking  towards  final  abolition.  Even  the  most 
sceptical  of  Chicago  citizens,  after  reading  the 
fearless  document,  shared  the  hope  of  the  com- 
mission that  “the  city,  when  aroused  to  the 
truth,  would  instantly  rebel  against  the  social 
evil  in  all  its  phases.”  A similar  recommenda- 
tion of  ultimate  abolition  was  recentlj’'  made 
unanimous  by  the  Minneapolis  vice  commission 
after  the  conversion  of  many  of  its  members. 
Doubtless  all  of  the  national  societies  have  before 
them  a task  only  less  gigantic  than  that  faced  by 
those  earlier  associations  in  America  for  the 
suppression  of  slavery,  although  it  may  be  legit- 
imate to  remind  them  that  the  best -known  anti- 
slavery society  in  America  was  organized  by  the 
New  England  abolitionists  in  1836,  and  only 
thirty-six  years  later,  in  1872,  was  formally  dis- 
banded because  its  object  had  been  accomplished. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


9 


The  long  struggle  ahead  of  these  newer  associa- 
tions will  doubtless  claim  its  martyrs  and  its 
heroes,  has  indeed  already  claimed  them  during 
the  last  thirty  years.  Few  righteous  causes  have 
escaped  baptism  with  blood;  nevertheless,  to 
paraphrase  Lincoln’s  speech,  if  blood  were  ex- 
acted drop  by  drop  in  measure  to  the  tears  of 
anguished  mothers  and  enslaved  girls,  the  nation 
would  still  be  obliged  to  go  into  the  struggle. 

Throughout  this  volume  the  phrase  “social 
evil”  is  used  to  designate  the  sexual  commerce 
permitted  to  exist  in  every  large  city,  usually 
in  a segregated  district,  wherein  the  chastity  of 
women  is  bought  and  sold.  Modifications  of  legal 
codes  regarding  marriage  and  divorce,  moral 
judgments  concerning  the  entire  group  of  ques- 
tions centring  about  illicit  affection  between 
men  and  women,  are  quite  other  questions 
which  are  not  considered  here.  Such  problems 
must  always  remain  distinct  from  those  of  com- 
mercialized vice,  as  must  the  treatment  of  an 
irreducible  minimum  of  prostitution,  which  will 
doubtless  long  exist,  quite  as  society  still  retains 
an  irreducible  minimum  of  murders.  This  vol- 
ume does  not  deal  with  the  probable  future  of 


10 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


prostitution,  and  gives  only  such  historical 
background  as  is  necessary  to  understand  the 
present  situation.  It  endeavors  to  present  the 
contributory  causes,  as  they  have  become  regis- 
tered in  my  consciousness  through  a long  resi- 
dence in  a crowded  city  quarter,  and  to  state  the 
indications,  as  I have  seen  them,  of  a new  con- 
science with  its  many  and  varied  manifestations. 

Nothing  is  gained  by  making  the  situation 
better  or  worse  than  it  is,  nor  in  anywise  different 
from  what  it  is.  This  ancient  evil  is  indeed  social 
in  the  sense  of  community  responsibility  and  can 
only  be  imderstood  and  at  length  remedied  when 
we  face  the  fact  and  measure  the  resources  which 
may  at  length  be  massed  against  it.  Perhaps 
the  most  striking  indication  that  our  generation 
has  become  the  bearer  of  a new  moral  conscious- 
ness in  regard  to  the  existence  of  commerciahzed 
vice  is  the  fact  that  the  mere  contemplation  of  it 
throws  the  more  sensitive  men  and  women  among 
our  contemporaries  into  a state  of  indignant 
revolt.  It  is  doubtless  an  instinctive  shrinking 
from  this  emotion  and  an  unconscious  dread  that 
this  modern  sensitiveness  will  be  outraged,  which 
justifies  to  themselves  so  many  moral  men  and 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


11 


women  in  their  persistent  ignorance  of  the  subject. 
Yet  one  of  the  most  obvious  resources  at  our 
command,  which  might  well  be  utilized  at  once, 
if  it  is  to  be  utilized  at  all,  is  the  overwhelming 
pity  and  sense  of  protection  which  the  recent 
revelation^s  in  the  white  slave  traffic  have  aroused 
for  the  thousands  of  young  girls,  many  of  them 
still  children,  who  are  yearly  sacrificed  to  the 
"sins  of  the  people.”  All  of  this  emotion  ought 
to  be  made  of  value,  for  quite  as  a state  of  emotion 
is  invariably  the  organic  preparation  for  action, 
so  it  is  certainly  true  that  no  profound  spiritual 
transformation  can  take  place  without  it. 

After  all,  human  progress  is  deeply  indebted 
to  a study  of  imperfections,  and  the  counsels  of 
despair,  if  not  full  of  seasoned  wisdom,  are  at 
least  fertile  in  suggestion  and  a desperate  spur  to 
action.  Sympathetic  knowledge  is  the  only  way 
of  approach  to  any  human  problem,  and  the  line 
of  least  resistance  into  the  jungle  of  human  wretch- 
edness must  always  be  through  that  region  which 
is  most  thoroughly  explored,  not  only  by  the 
information  of  the  statistician,  but  by  sympa- 
thetic understanding.  We  are  daily  attaining  the 
latter  through  such  authors  as  Sudermann  and 


12 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Elsa  Gerusalem,  who  have  enabled  their  readers 
to  comprehend  the  so-called  “fallen”  woman 
through  a skilful  portrayal  of  the  reaction  of 
experience  upon  personahty.  Their  reaUsm  has 
rescued  her  from  the  sentimentality  surrotmding 
an  impossible  Camille  quite  as  their  fellow-crafts- 
men in  realism  have  replaced  the  weeping  Amehas 
of  the  Victorian  period  by  reasonable  women 
transcribed  from  actual  life. 

The  treatment  of  this  subject  in  American 
literature  is  at  present  in  the  pamphleteering 
stage,  although  an  ever-increasing  number  of 
short  stories  and  novels  deal  with  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  plays  through  which  Bernard 
Shaw  constantly  places  the  truth  before  the 
public  in  England  as  Brieux  is  doing  for  the  pub- 
lic in  France,  produce  in  the  spectators  a dis- 
quieting sense  that  society  is  involved  in  com- 
mercialized vice  and  must  speedily  find  a way 
out.  Such  writing  is  like  the  roll  of  the  drum 
which  announces  the  approach  of  the  troops 
ready  for  action. 

Some  of  the  writers  who  are  performing  this 
valiant  service  are  related  to  those  great  artists 
who  in  every  age  enter  into  a long  struggle  with 
existing  social  conditions,  until  after  many  years 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


13 


they  change  the  outlook  upon  life  for  at  least  a 
handful  of  their  contemporaries.  Their  readers 
find  themselves  no  longer  mere  bewildered  spec- 
tators of  a given  social  wrong,  but  have  become 
conscious  of  their  own  hypocrisy  in  regard  to  it, 
and  they  realize  that  a veritable  horror,  simply 
because  it  was  hidden,  had  come  to  seem  to  them 
inevitable  and  almost  normal. 

Many  traces  of  this  first  uneasy  consciousness 
regarding  the  social  evil  are  found  in  contempo- 
rary literature,  for  while  the  business  of  literature 
is  revelation  and  not  reformation,  it  may  yet  per- 
form for  the  men  and  women  now  living  that 
purification  of  the  imagination  and  intellect  which 
the  Greeks  believed  to  come  through  pity  and 
terror. 

Secure  in  the  knowledge  of  evolutionary  pro- 
cesses, we  have  learned  to  talk  glibly  of  the  obli- 
gations of  race  progress  and  of  the  possibility  of 
racial  degeneration.  In  this  respect  certainly 
we  have  a wider  outlook  than  that  possessed  by 
our  fathers,  who  so  valiantly  grappled  with 
chattel  slavery  and  secured  its  overthrow.  May 
the  new  conscience  gather  force  until  men  and 
women,  acting  under  its  sway,  shall  be  constrained 
to  eradicate  this  ancient  evil! 


RECENT 


LEGAL  ENACTMENTS 


CHAPTER  II 


RECENT  LEGAL  ENACTMENTS 

At  the  present  moment  even  the  least  con- 
scientious citizens  agree  that,  first  and  foremost, 
the  organized  traffic  in  what  has  come  to  be 
called  white  slaves  must  be  suppressed  and  that 
those  traffickers  who  procure  their  victims  for 
purely  commercial  purposes  must  be  arrested 
and  prosecuted.  As  it  is  impossible  to  rescue 
girls  fraudulently  and  illegally  detained,  save 
through  governmental  agencies,  it  is  naturally 
through  the  line  of  legal  action  that  the  most 
striking  revelations  of  the  white  slave  traffic 
have  come.  For  the  sake  of  convenience,  we 
may  divide  this  legal  action  into  those  cases 
dealing  with  the  international  trade,  those  with 
the  state  and  interstate  traffic,  and  the  regulations 
with  which  the  municipality  alone  is  concerned. 

First  in  value  to  the  white  slave  commerce  is 
the  girl  imported  from  abroad  who  from  the 
nature  of  the  case  is  most  completely  in  the  power 


18 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


of  the  trader.  She  is  literally  friendless  and 
unable  to  speak  the  language  and  at  last  dis- 
couraged she  makes  no  effort  to  escape.  Many 
cases  of  the  international  traffic  were  recently 
tried  in  Chicago  and  the  offenders  convicted  by 
the  federal  authorities.  One  of  these  cases, 
which  attracted  much  attention  throughout  the 
country,  was  of  Marie,  a French  girl,  the  daughter 
of  a Breton  stone  mason,  so  old  and  poor  that 
he  was  obliged  to  take  her  from  her  convent 
school  at  the  age  of  twelve  years.  He  sent  her 
to  Paris,  where  she  became  a little  household 
drudge  and  mu’se-maid,  working  from  six  in  the 
morning  imtil  eight  at  night,  and  for  three  years 
sending  her  wages,  which  were  about  a franc  a 
day,  directly  to  her  parents  in  the  Breton  village. 
One  afternoon,  as  she  was  buying  a bottle  of 
milk  at  a tiny  shop,  she  was  engaged  in  conver- 
sation by  a young  man  who  invited  her  into  a 
little  'patisserie  where,  after  giving  her  some 
sweets,  he  introduced  her  to  his  friend.  Monsieur 
Paret,  who  was  gathering  together  a theatrical 
troupe  to  go  to  America.  Paret  showed  her 
pictures  of  several  yoimg  girls  gorgeously  arrayed 
and  announcements  of  their  coming  tour,  and 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


19 


Marie  felt  much  flattered  when  it  was  intimated 
that  she  might  join  this  brilliant  company. 
After  several  clandestine  meetings  to  perfect  the 
plan,  she  left  the  city  with  Paret  and  a pretty 
French  girl  to  sail  for  America  with  the  rest  of 
the  so-called  actors.  Paret  escaped  detection 
by  the  immigration  authorities  in  New  York, 
through  his  ruse  of  the  “Kinsella  troupe,”  and 
took  the  girls  directly  to  Chicago.  Here  they 
were  placed  in  a disreputable  house  belonging  to 
a man  named  Lair,  who  had  advanced  the  money 
for  their  importation.  The  two  French  girls 
remained  in  this  house  for  several  months  until 
it  was  raided  by  the  police,  when  they  were  sent 
to  separate  houses.  The  records  which  were 
later  brought  into  court  show  that  at  this  time 
Marie  was  earning  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
a week,  all  of  which  she  gave  to  her  employers. 
In  spite  of  this  large  monetary  return  she  was 
often  cruelly  beaten,  was  made  to  do  the  house- 
hold scrubbing,  and  was,  of  course,  never  allowed 
to  leave  the  house.  Furthermore,  as  one  of  the 
methods  of  retaining  a reluctant  girl  is  to  put 
her  hopelessly  in  debt  and  always  to  charge 
against  her  the  expenses  incurred  in  securing 


20 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


her,  Marie  as  an  imported  girl  had  begun  at  once 
with  the  huge  debt  of  the  ocean  journey  for 
Paret  and  herself.  In  addition  to  this  large 
sum  she  was  charged,  according  to  universal 
custom,  with  exorbitant  prices  for  all  the  clothing 
she  received  and  with  any  money  which  Paret 
chose  to  draw  against  her  accoimt.  Later,  when 
Marie  contracted  typhoid  fever,  she  was  sent  for 
treatment  to  a public  hospital  and  it  was  duriug 
her  illness  there,  when  a general  investigation 
was  made  of  the  white  slave  traffic,  that  a federal 
officer  visited  her.  Marie,  who  thought  she  was 
going  to  die,  freely  gave  her  testimony,  which 
proved  to  be  most  valuable. 

The  federal  authorities  following  up  her  state- 
ments at  last  located  Paret  in  the  citj'  prison  at 
Atlanta,  Georgia,  where  he  had  been  convicted 
on  a similar  charge.  He  was  brought  to  Chicago 
and  on  his  testimony  Lair  was  also  convicted  and 
imprisoned. 

Marie  has  since  married  a man  who  wishes  to 
protect  her  from  the  influence  of  her  old  life, 
but  although  not  yet  twentj'’  years  old  and  making 
an  honest  effort,  what  she  has  undergone  has 
apparently  so  far  warped  and  weakened  her  \wll 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


21 


that  she  is  only  partially  successful  in  keeping 
her  resolutions,  and  she  sends  each  month  to  her 
parents  in  France  ten  or  twelve  dollars,  which 
she  confesses  to  have  earned  illicitly.  It  is  as 
if  the  shameful  experiences  to  which  this  little 
convent-bred  Breton  girl  was  forcibly  subjected, 
had  finally  become  registered  in  every  fibre  of 
her  being  until  the  forced  demoralization  has 
become  genuine.  She  is  as  powerless  now  to 
save  herself  from  her  subjective  temptations  as 
she  was  helpless  five  years  ago  to  save  herself 
from  her  captors. 

Such  demoralization  is,  of  course,  most  valu- 
able to  the  white  slave  trader,  for  when  a girl  has 
become  thoroughly  accustomed  to  the  life  and 
testifies  that  she  is  in  it  of  her  own  free  will,  she 
puts  herself  beyond  the  protection  of  the  law. 
She  belongs  to  a legally  degraded  class,  without 
redress  in  courts  of  justice  for  personal  outrages. 

Marie,  herself,  at  the  end  of  her  third  year  in 
America,  wrote  to  the  police  appealing  for  help, 
but  the  lieutentant  who  in  response  to  her  letter 
visited  the  house,  was  convinced  by  Lair  that 
she  was  there  of  her  own  volition  and  that  there- 
fore he  could  do  nothing  for  her.  It  is  easy  to 


22 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


see  why  it  thus  becomes  part  of  the  business  to 
break  down  a girl’s  moral  nature  by  all  those 
horrible  devices  which  are  constantly  used  by  the 
owner  of  a white  slave.  Because  life  is  so  often 
shortened  for  these  wretched  girls,  their  owners 
degrade  them  morally  as  quickly  as  possible, 
lest  death  release  them  before  their  full  profit 
has  been  secured.  In  addition  to  the  quantity 
of  sacrificed  virtue,  to  the  bulk  of  impotent  suf- 
fering, which  these  white  slaves  represent,  our 
civilization  becomes  permanently  tainted  with 
the  vicious  practices  designed  to  accelerate  the 
demoralization  of  unwilling  victims  in  order  to 
make  them  commercially  valuable.  Moreover, 
a girl  thus  rendered  more  useful  to  her  owner, 
will  thereafter  fail  to  touch  either  the  chivalry 
of  men  or  the  tenderness  of  women  because  good 
men  and  women  have  become  convinced  of  her 
innate  degeneracy,  a word  we  have  learned  to 
use  with  the  unction  formerly  placed  upon 
original  sin.  The  very  revolt  of  society  against 
such  girls  is  used  by  their  owners  as  a protection 
to  the  business. 

The  case  against  the  captors  of  IVIarie,  as  well 
as  twenty-four  other  cases,  was  ably  and  vigor- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


23 


ously  conducted  by  Edwin  W.  Sinas,  United 
States  District  Attorney  in  Chicago.  He  prose- 
cuted under  a clause  of  the  immigration  act 
of  1908,  which  was  unfortunately  declared  un- 
constitutional early  the  next  year,  when  for  the 
moment  federal  authorities  found  themselves 
unable  to  proceed  directly  against  this  inter- 
national traffic.  They  could  not  act  under  the 
international  white  slave  treaty  signed  by  the 
contracting  powers  in  Paris  in  1904,  and  pro- 
claimed by  the  President  of  the  United  States  in 
1908,  because  it  was  found  impossible  to  carry 
out  its  provisions  without  federal  police.  The 
long  consideration  of  this  treaty  by  Congress 
made  clear  to  the  nation  that  it  is  in  matters  of 
this  sort  that  navies  are  powerless  and  that  as 
our  international  problems  become  more  social, 
other  agencies  must  be  provided,  a point  which 
arbitration  committees  have  long  urged.  The 
discussion  of  the  international  treaty  brought  the 
subject  before  the  entire  country  as  a matter  for 
immediate  legislation  and  for  executive  action, 
and  the  White  Slave  Traffic  Act  was  finally 
passed  by  Congress  in  1910,  under  which  all 
later  prosecutions  have  since  been  conducted. 


24 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


When  the  decision  on  the  immigration  clause 
rendered  in  1909  threw  the  burden  of  prosecu- 
tion back  upon  the  states,  Mr.  Clifford  Roe, 
then  assistant  State’s  Attorney,  within  one  year 
investigated  348  such  cases,  domestic  and  foreign, 
and  successfully  prosecuted  91,  carrying  on  the 
vigorous  policy  inaugurated  by  United  States 
Attorney  Sims.  In  1908  Illinois  passed  the 
first  pandering  law  in  this  country,  changing 
the  offence  from  disorderly  conduct  to  a mis- 
demeanor, and  greatly  increasing  the  penalty. 
In  many  states  pandering  is  still  so  little  defined 
as  to  make  the  crime  merely  a breach  of  man- 
ners and  to  put  it  in  the  same  class  of  offences 
as  selling  a street-car  transfer. 

As  a result  of  this  vigorous  action,  Chicago 
became  the  first  city  to  look  the  situation  squarely 
in  the  face,  and  to  make  a determined  business- 
like fight  against  the  procuring  of  girls.  An 
office  was  established  by  public-spirited  citizens 
where  Mr.  Roe  was  placed  in  charge  and 
empowered  to  follow  up  the  clues  of  the  traffic 
wherever  found  and  to  bring  the  traffickers  to 
justice;  in  consequence  the  white  slave  traders 
have  become  so  frightened  that  the  foreign  im- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


25 


portation  of  girls  to  Chicago  has  markedly  de- 
clined. It  is  estimated  by  Mr.  Roe  that  since 
1909  about  one  thousand  white  slave  traders, 
of  whom  thirty  or  forty  were  importers  of  foreign 
girls,  have  been  driven  away  from  the  city. 

Throughout  the  Congressional  discussions  of 
the  white  slave  traffic,  beginning  with  the  Howell- 
Bennett  Act  in  1907,  it  was  evident  that  the 
subject  was  closely  allied  to  immigration,  and 
when  the  immigration  commission  made  a partial 
report  to  Congress  in  December,  1909,  upon  “the 
importation  and  harboring  of  women  for  immoral 
purposes,”  their  finding  only  emphasized  the 
report  of  the  Commissioner  General  of  Immi- 
gration made  earlier  in  the  year.  His  report 
had  traced  the  international  traffic  directly  to 
New  York,  Chicago,  Boston,  Buffalo,  New  Or- 
leans, Denver,  Seattle,  Portland,  Salt  Lake  City, 
Ogden,  and  Butte.  As  the  list  of  cities  was  com- 
paratively small,  it  seemed  not  unreasonable  to 
hope  that  the  international  traffic  might  be 
rigorously  prosecuted,  with  the  prospect  of  finally 
doing  away  with  it  in  spite  of  its  subtle  methods, 
its  multiplied  ramifications,  and  its  financial 
resources.  Only  officials  of  vigorous  conscience 


26 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


can  deal  with  this  traffic;  but  certainly  there 
can  be  no  nobler  service  for  federal  and  state 
officers  to  undertake  than  this  protection  of 
immigrant  girls. 

It  is  obvious  that  a foreign  girl  who  speaks 
no  English,  who  has  not  the  remotest  idea 
in  what  part  of  the  city  her  fellow-countrj^- 
men  live,  who  does  not  know  the  police  station 
or  any  agency  to  which  she  may  apply,  is 
almost  as  valuable  to  a white  slave  trafficker 
as  a girl  imported  directly  for  the  trade.  The 
trafficker  makes  every  effort  to  intercept  such 
a girl  before  she  can  communicate  with  her  rela- 
tions. Although  great  care  is  taken  at  Elhs 
Island,  the  girl’s  destination  carefully  indicated 
upon  her  ticket  and  her  friends  communicated 
with,  after  she  boards  the  train  the  governmental 
protection  is  withdrawn  and  many  untoward 
experiences  may  befaU  a girl  between  New  York 
and  her  final  destination.  Only  this  year  a 
Polish  mother  of  the  Hull  House  neighborhood 
failed  to  find  her  daughter  on  a New  York  train 
upon  which  she  had  been  notified  to  expect  her, 
because  the  girl  had  been  induced  to  leave  the 
New  York  train  at  South  Chicago,  where  she 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


27 


was  met  by  two  young  men,  one  of  them  well 
known  to  the  police,  and  the  other  a young  Pole, 
purporting  to  have  been  sent  by  the  girl’s  mother. 

The  immigrant  girl  also  encounters  dangers 
upon  the  very  moment  of  her  arrival.  The  cab- 
men and  expressmen  are  often  unscrupulous. 
One  of  the  latter  was  recently  indicted  in  Chicago 
upon  the  charge  of  regularly  procuring  immi- 
grant girls  for  a disreputable  hotel.  The  non- 
English  speaking  girl  handing  her  written  address 
to  a cabman  has  no  means  of  knowing  whither 
he  will  drive  her,  but  is  obliged  to  place  herself 
implicitly  in  his  hands.  The  Immigrants’  Pro- 
tective League  has  brought  about  many  changes 
in  this  respect,  but  has  upon  its  records  some 
piteous  tales  of  girls  who  were  thus  easily 
deceived. 

An  immigrant  girl  is  occasionally  exploited  by 
her  own  lover  whom  she  has  come  to  America  to 
marry.  I recall  the  case  of  a Russian  girl  thus 
decoyed  into  a disreputable  life  by  a man 
deceiving  her  through  a fake  marriage  ceremony. 
Although  not  found  until  a year  later,  the  girl 
had  never  ceased  to  be  distressed  and  rebellious. 
Many  Slovak  and  Polish  girls,  coming  to  America 


28 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


without  their  relatives,  board  in  houses  already 
filled  with  their  countrymen  who  have  also  pre- 
ceded their  own  families  to  the  land  of  promise, 
hoping  to  earn  money  enough  to  send  for  them 
later.  The  immigrant  girl  is  thus  exposed  to 
dangers  at  the  very  moment  when  she  is  least 
able  to  defend  herself.  Such  a girl,  already  be- 
wildered by  the  change  from  an  old  world  village 
to  an  American  city,  is  unfortunately  sometimes 
convinced  that  the  new  country  freedom  does 
away  with  the  necessity  for  a marriage  ceremony. 
Many  others  are  told  that  judgment  for  a moral 
lapse  is  less  severe  in  America  than  in  the  old 
country.  The  last  month’s  records  of  the  Munic- 
ipal Court  in  Chicago,  set  aside  to  hear  domestic 
relation  cases,  show  sixteen  unfortunate  girls,  of 
whom  eight  were  immigrant  girls  representing 
eight  different  nationalities.  These  discouraged 
and  deserted  girls  become  an  easy  prey  for  the 
procurers  who  have  sometimes  been  in  league 
with  their  lovers. 

Even  those  girls  who  immigrate  with  their 
families  and  sustain  an  affectionate  relation  vdth 
them  are  yet  often  curiously  free  from  chaperon- 
age.  The  immigrant  mothers  do  not  know  where 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


29 


their  daughters  work,  save  that  it  is  in  a vague 
“over  there”  or  “down  town.”  They  them- 
selves were  guarded  by  careful  mothers  and  they 
would  gladly  give  the  same  oversight  to  their 
daughters,  but  the  entire  situation  is  so  unlike 
that  of  their  own  peasant  girlhoods  that,  dis- 
couraged by  their  inability  to  judge  it,  they  make 
no  attempt  to  understand  their  daughters’  lives. 
The  girls,  realizing  this  inability  on  the  part 
of  their  mothers,  elated  by  that  sense  of  inde- 
pendence which  the  first  taste  of  self-support 
always  brings,  sheltered  from  observation  during 
certain  hours,  are  almost  as  free  from  social  con- 
trol as  is  the  traditional  young  man  who  comes  up 
from  the  country  to  take  care  of  himself  in  a 
great  city.  These  immigrant  parents  are,  of 
course,  quite  unable  lu  foresee  that  while  a girl 
feels  a certain  restraint  of  public  opinion  from  the 
tenement  house  neighbors  among  whom  she  lives, 
and  while  she  also  responds  to  the  public  opinion 
of  her  associates  in  a factory  where  she  works, 
there  is  no  public  opinion  at  all  operating  as  a 
restraint  upon  her  in  the  hours  which  lie  be- 
tween the  two,  occupied  in  the  coming  and  going 
to  work  through  the  streets  of  a city  large  enough 


30  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

to  offer  every  opportunity  for  concealment.  So 
much  of  the  recreation  which  is  provided  by 
commercial  agencies,  even  in  its  advertisements, 
deliberately  plays  upon  the  interest  of  sex  because 
it  is  under  such  excitement  and  that  of  alcohol 
that  money  is  most  recklessly  spent.  The  great 
human  dynamic,  which  it  has  been  the  long 
effort  of  centuries  to  limit  to  family  life,  is 
deliberately  utilized  for  advertising  purposes,  and 
it  is  inevitable  that  many  girls  yield  to  such 
allurements. 

On  the  other  hand,  one  is  filled  with  admira- 
tion for  the  many  immigrant  girls  who  in  the 
midst  of  insuperable  difi&culties  resist  aU  tempta- 
tions. Such  admiration  was  certainly  due  Olga, 
a tall,  handsome  girl,  a little  passive  and  slow, 
yet  with  that  touch  of  dignity  which  a continued 
mood  of  introspection  so  often  lends  to  the  young. 
Olga  had  been  in  Chicago  for  a year  living  with 
an  aunt  who,  when  she  returned  to  Sweden, 
placed  her  niece  in  a boarding-house  which  she 
knew  to  be  thoroughly  respectable.  But  a 
friendless  girl  of  such  striking  beauty  could  not 
escape  the  machinations  of  those  who  profit  by 
the  sale  of  girls.  Almost  immediately  Olga 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


31 


found  herself  beset  by  two  young  men  who  con- 
tinually forced  themselves  upon  her  attention, 
although  she  refused  all  their  invitations  to  shows 
and  dances.  In  six  months  the  frightened  girl 
had  changed  her  boarding-place  four  times, 
hoping  that  the  men  would  not  be  able  to  follow 
her.  She  was  also  obliged  constantly  to  look 
for  a cheaper  place,  because  the  dull  season  in 
the  cloak-making  trade  came  early  that  year. 
In  the  fifth  boarding-house  she  finally  found  her- 
self so  hopelessly  in  arrears  that  the  landlady, 
tired  of  waiting  for  the  “new  cloak  making  to 
begin,”  at  length  fulfilled  a long-promised  threat, 
and  one  summer  evening  at  nine  o’clock  literally 
put  Olga  into  the  street,  retaining  her  trunk  in 
payment  of  the  debt.  The  girl  walked  the  street 
for  hours,  until  she  fancied  that  she  saw  one  of 
her  persecutors  in  the  distance,  when  she  hastily 
took  refuge  in  a sheltered  doorway,  crouching  in 
terror.  Although  no  one  approached  her,  she 
sat  there  late  into  the  night,  apparently  too 
apathetic  to  move.  With  the  curious  inconse- 
quence of  moody  youth,  she  was  not  aroused 
to  action  by  the  situation  in  which  she  found 
herself.  The  incident  epitomized  to  her  the 


32 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


everlasting  riddle  of  the  universe  to  which  she 
could  see  no  solution  and  she  drearily  decided  to 
throw  herself  into  the  lake.  As  she  left  the  door- 
way at  daybreak  for  this  pitiful  purpose,  she 
attracted  the  attention  of  a passing  policeman. 
In  response  to  his  questions,  kindly  at  first  but 
becoming  exasperated  as  he  was  convinced  that 
she  was  either  “touched  in  her  wits”  or  “guy- 
ing” him,  he  obtained  a confused  story  of  the 
persecutions  of  the  two  young  men,  and  in  sheer 
bewilderment  he  finally  took  her  to  the  station 
on  the  very  charge  against  the  thought  of  which 
she  had  so  long  contended. 

The  girl  was  doubtless  sullen  in  court  the  next 
morning;  she  was  resentful  of  the  policeman’s 
talk,  she  was  oppressed  and  discouraged  and 
therefore  taciturn.  She  herself  said  afterwards 
that  she  “often  got  still  that  way.”  She  so 
sharply  felt  the  disgrace  of  arrest,  after  her  long 
struggle  for  respectability,  that  she  gave  a false 
name  and  became  involved  in  a story  to  which 
she  could  devote  but  half  her  attention,  being 
still  absorbed  in  an  undercurrent  of  speculative 
thought  which  continually  broke  through  the 
flimsy  tale  she  was  fabricating. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


33 


With  the  evidence  before  him,  the  judge  felt 
obliged  to  sustain  the  policeman’s  charge,  and 
as  Olga  could  not  pay  the  fine  imposed,  he  sen- 
tenced her  to  the  city  prison.  The  girl,  however, 
had  appeared  so  strangely  that  the  judge  was 
uncomfortable  and  gave  her  in  charge  of  a repre- 
sentative of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association 
in  the  hope  that  she  could  discover  the  whole 
situation,  meantime  suspending  the  sentence.  It 
took  hours  of  patient  conversation  with  the  girl 
and  the  kindly  services  of  a well-known  alienist 
to  break  into  her  dangerous  state  of  mind  and  to 
gain  her  confidence.  Prolonged  medical  treat- 
ment averted  the  threatened  melancholia  and  she 
was  at  last  rescued  from  the  meaningless  despon- 
dency so  hostile  to  life  itself,  which  has  claimed 
many  young  victims. 

It  is  strange  that  we  are  so  slow  to  learn  that 
no  one  can  safely  live  without  companionship 
and  affection,  that  the  individual  who  tries  the 
hazardous  experiment  of  going  without  at  least 
one  of  them  is  prone  to  be  swamped  by  a black 
mood  from  within.  It  is  as  if  we  had  to  build 
little  islands  of  affection  in  the  vast  sea  of  im- 
personal forces  lest  we  be  overwhelmed  by  them. 


34 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Yet  we  know  that  in  every  large  city  there  are 
hundreds  of  men  whose  business  it  is  to  discover 
girls  thus  hard  pressed  by  loneliness  and  despair, 
to  urge  upon  them  the  old  excuse  that  “no  one 
cares  what  you  do,”  to  fill  them  with  cheap 
cynicism  concerning  the  value  of  virtue,  all  to 
the  end  that  a business  profit  may  be  secured. 

Had  Olga  yielded  to  the  solicitations  of  bad 
men  and  had  the  immigration  authorities  in  the 
federal  building  of  Chicago  discovered  her  in 
the  disreputable  hotel  in  which  her  captors  w'anted 
to  place  her,  she  would  have  been  deported  to 
Sweden,  sent  home  in  disgrace  from  the  covmtry 
which  had  failed  to  protect  her.  Certainly  the 
immigration  laws  might  do  better  than  to  send 
a girl  back  to  her  parents,  diseased  and  dis- 
graced because  America  has  failed  to  safeguard 
her  virtue  from  the  machinations  of  well-known 
but  unrestrained  criminals.  The  possibihty  of 
deportation  on  the  charge  of  prostitution  is 
sometimes  utilized  by  jealous  husbands  or  re- 
jected lovers.  Only  last  year  a Russian  girl 
came  to  Chicago  to  meet  her  lover  and  was  de- 
ceived by  a fake  marriage.  Although  the  man 
basely  deserted  her  within  a few  weeks  he  be- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


35 


came  very  jealous  a year  later  when  he  discovered 
that  she  was  about  to  be  married  to  a prosperous 
fellow-countryman,  and  made  charges  against 
her  to  the  federal  authorities  concerning  her 
life  in  Russia.  It  was  with  the  greatest  difficulty 
that  the  girl  was  saved  from  deportation  to 
Russia  under  circumstances  which  would  have 
compelled  her  to  take  out  a red  ticket  in  Odessa, 
and  to  live  forevermore  the  life  with  which  her 
lover  had  wantonly  charged  her. 

May  we  not  hope  that  in  time  the  nation’s  policy 
in  regard  to  immigrants  will  become  less  negative 
and  that  a measure  of  protection  will  be  extended 
to  them  during  the  three  years  when  they  are  so 
liable  to  prompt  deportation  if  they  become 
criminals  or  paupers? 

While  it  may  be  difficult  for  the  federal  author- 
ities to  accomplish  this  protection  and  will  doubt- 
less require  an  extension  of  the  powers  of  the 
Department  of  Immigration,  certainly  no  one 
will  doubt  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  city  itself 
to  extend  much  more  protection  to  young  girls 
who  so  thoughtlessly  walk  upon  its  streets. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  grave  consequences  which 
lack  of  proper  supervision  implies,  the  municipal 


36 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


treatment  of  commercialized  vice  not  only  differs 
in  each  city  but  varies  greatly  in  the  same  city 
under  changing  administrations. 

The  situation  is  enormously  complicated  by 
the  Pharisaic  attitude  of  the  public  which  wishes 
to  have  the  comfort  of  declaring  the  social  evil 
to  be  illegal,  while  at  the  same  time  it  expects 
the  police  department  to  regulate  it  and  to  make 
it  as  little  obvious  as  possible.  In  reahty  the 
police,  as  they  themselves  know,  are  not  expected 
to  serve  the  pubUc  in  this  matter  but  to  consult 
the  desires  of  the  politicians;  for,  next,  to  the  fast 
and  loose  police  control  of  gambling,  nothing 
affords  better  political  material  than  the  regula- 
tion of  commercialized  vice.  First  in  line  is  the 
ward  politician  who  keeps  a disorderly  saloon 
which  serves  both  as  a meeting-place  for  the 
vicious  yoimg  men  engaged  in  the  traffic  and  as 
a market  for  their  wares.  Back  of  this  the  politi- 
cian higher  up  receives  his  share  of  the  toll  which 
this  business  pays  that  it  may  remain  undis- 
turbed. The  very  existence  of  a segregated  dis- 
trict under  police  regulation  means,  of  course, 
that  the  existing  law  must  be  nullified  or  at  least 
rendered  totally  inoperative.  When  police  regu- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


37 


lation  takes  the  place  of  law  enforcement  a 
species  of  municipal  blackmail  inevitably  be- 
comes intrenched.  The  police  are  forced  to 
regulate  an  illicit  trade,  but  because  the  men 
engaged  in  an  unlawful  business  expect  to  pay 
money  for  its  protection,  the  corruption  of  the 
police  department  is  firmly  established  and,  as 
the  Chicago  vice  commission  report  points  out, 
is  merely  called  “protection  to  the  business.” 
The  practice  of  grafting  thereafter  becomes  al- 
most official.  On  the  other  hand,  any  man  who 
attempts  to  show  mercy  to  the  victims  of  that 
business,  or  to  regulate  it  from  the  victim’s  point 
of  view,  is  considered  a traitor  to  the  cause.  Quite 
recently  a former  inspector  of  police  in  Chicago 
established  a requirement  that  every  young 
girl  who  came  to  live  in  a disreputable  house 
within  a prescribed  district  must  be  reported  to 
him  within  an  hour  after  her  arrival.  Each  one 
was  closely  questioned  as  to  her  reasons  for  enter- 
ing into  the  life.  If  she  was  very  young,  she  was 
warned  of  its  inevitable  consequences  and  urged 
to  abandon  her  project.  Every  assistance  was 
offered  her  to  return  to  work  and  to  live  a normal 
life.  Occasionally  a girl  was  desperate  and 


38 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


it  was  sometimes  necessary  that  she  be  forcibly 
detained  in  the  police  station  until  her  friends 
could  be  communicated  with.  More  often  she 
was  glad  to  avail  herself  of  the  chance  of  escape; 
practically  always,  unless  she  had  already  become 
romantically  entangled  with  a disreputable  young 
man,  whom  she  firmly  believed  to  be  her  genuine 
lover  and  protector. 

One  day  a telephone  message  came  to  Hull 
House  from  the  inspector  asking  us  to  take 
charge  of  a young  girl  who  had  been  brought  into 
the  station  by  an  older  woman  for  registration. 
The  girl’s  youth  and  the  innocence  of  her  replies 
to  the  usual  questions  convinced  the  inspector 
that  she  was  ignorant  of  the  life  she  was  about  to 
enter  and  that  she  probably  beheved  she  was 
simply  registering  her  choice  of  a boarding-house. 
Her  story  which  she  told  at  Hull  House  was  as 
follows:  She  was  a Milwaukee  factory  girl, 
the  daughter  of  a Bohemian  carpenter.  Ten 
days  before  she  had  met  a Chicago  young  man 
at  a Milwaukee  dance  hall  and  after  a brief 
courtship  had  promised  to  marry  him,  arranging 
to  meet  him  in  Chicago  the  following  week. 
Fearing  that  her  Bohemian  mother  would  not 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


39 


approve  of  this  plan,  which  she  called  “the  Ameri- 
can way  of  getting  married,”  the  girl  had  risen 
one  morning  even  earlier  than  factory  work 
necessitated  and  had  taken  the  first  train  to 
Chicago.  The  young  man  met  her  at  the  station, 
took  her  to  a saloon  where  he  introduced  her  to 
a friend,  an  older  woman,  who,  he  said,  would 
take  good  care  of  her.  After  the  young  man  dis- 
appeared, ostensibly  for  the  marriage  license, 
the  woman  professed  to  be  much  shocked  that 
the  little  bride  had  brought  no  luggage,  and 
persuaded  her  that  she  must  work  a few  weeks 
in  order  to  earn  money  for  her  trousseau,  and 
that  she,  an  older  woman  who  knew  the  city, 
would  find  a boarding-house  and  a place  in  a 
factory  for  her.  She  further  induced  her  to 
write  postal  cards  to  six  of  her  girl  friends  in 
Milwaukee,  telling  them  of  the  kind  lady  in 
Chicago,  of  the  good  chances  for  work,  and  urging 
them  to  come  down  to  the  address  which  she 
sent.  The  woman  told  the  unsuspecting  girl 
that,  first  of  all,  a newcomer  must  register  her 
place  of  residence  with  the  police,  as  that  was  the 
law  in  Chicago.  It  was,  of  course,  when  the 
woman  took  her  to  the  police  station  that  the 


40 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


situation  was  disclosed.  It  needed  but  little 
investigation  to  make  clear  that  the  girl  had 
narrowly  escaped  a well-organized  plot  and  that 
the  young  man  to  whom  she  was  engaged  was 
an  agent  for  a disreputable  house.  Mr.  Chfford 
Roe  took  up  the  case  with  vigor,  and  although 
all  efforts  failed  to  find  the  young  man,  the 
woman  who  was  his  accomplice  was  fined  one 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  and  costs. 

The  one  impression  which  the  trial  left  upon 
our  minds  was  that  all  the  men  concerned  in  the 
prosecution  felt  a keen  sense  of  outrage  against 
the  method  employed  to  secure  the  girl,  but  took 
for  granted  that  the  life  she  was  about  to  lead 
was  in  the  established  order  of  things,  if  she  had 
chosen  it  volimtarily.  In  other  words,  if  the 
efforts  of  the  agent  had  gone  far  enough  to  in- 
volve her  moral  nature,  the  girl,  who  although 
unsophisticated,  was  twenty-one  years  old,  could 
have  remained,  quite  unchallenged,  in  the  hideous 
life.  The  woman  who  was  prosecuted  was  well 
known  to  the  police  and  was  fined,  not  for  her 
daily  occupation,  but  because  she  had  become 
involved  in  interstate  white  slave  traffic.  One 
touch  of  nature  redeemed  the  trial,  for  the  girl 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


41 


suffered  much  more  from  the  sense  that  she  had 
been  deserted  by  her  lover  than  from  horror  over 
the  fate  she  had  escaped,  and  she  was  never 
wholly  convinced  that  he  had  not  been  genuine. 
She  asserted  constantly,  in  order  to  account  for 
his  absence,  that  some  accident  must  have 
befallen  him.  She  felt  that  he  was  her  natural 
protector  in  this  strange  Chicago  to  which  she 
had  come  at  his  behest  and  continually  resented 
any  imputation  of  his  motives.  The  betrayal  of 
her  confidence,  the  playing  upon  her  natural  desire 
for  a home  of  her  own,  was  a ghastly  revelation 
that  even  when  this  hideous  trade  is  managed 
upon  the  most  carefully  calculated  commercial 
principles,  it  must  still  resort  to  the  use  of  the  old- 
est of  the  social  instincts  as  its  basis  of  procedure. 

This  Chicago  police  inspector,  whose  desire 
to  protect  young  girls  was  so  genuine  and 
so  successful,  was  afterward  indicted  by  the 
grand  jury  and  sent  to  the  penitentiary  on  the 
charge  of  accepting  “graft”  from  saloon-keepers 
and  proprietors  of  the  disreputable  houses  in  his 
district.  His  experience  was  a dramatic  and 
tragic  portrayal  of  the  position  into  which  every 
city  forces  its  police.  When  a girl  who  has  been 


42 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


secured  for  the  life  is  dissuaded  from  it,  her 
rescue  represents  a definite  monetary  loss  to  the 
agency  which  has  secured  her  and  incurs  the 
enmity  of  those  who  expected  to  profit  by  her. 
When  this  enmity  has  sufficiently  accumulated, 
the  active  official  is  either  “called  down”  by 
higher  political  authority,  or  brought  to  trial  for 
those  illegal  practices  which  he  shares  with  his 
fellow-officials.  It  is,  therefore,  easy  to  make 
such  an  inspector  as  ours  suffer  for  his  virtues, 
which  are  individual,  by  bringing  charges  against 
his  grafting,  which  is  general  and  almost  official. 
So  long  as  the  customary  prices  for  protection 
are  adhered  to,  no  one  feels  aggrieved;  but  the 
sentiment  which  prompts  an  inspector  “to  side 
with  the  girls”  and  to  destroy  thousands  of 
dollars’  worth  of  business  is  unjustifiable.  He 
has  not  stuck  to  the  rules  of  the  game  and  the 
pack  of  enraged  gamesters,  under  full  cry  of 
“morality,”  can  very  easily  run  him  to  ground, 
the  public  meantime  being  gratified  that  police 
corruption  has  been  exposed  and  the  offender 
punished.  Yet  hundreds  of  girls,  who  could 
have  been  discovered  in  no  other  way,  were 
rescued  by  this  man  in  his  capacity  of  police 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


43 


inspector.  On  the  other  hand,  he  did  little  to 
bring  to  justice  those  responsible  for  securing  the 
girls,  and  while  he  rescued  the  victim,  he  did  not 
interfere  with  the  source  of  supply.  Had  he 
been  brought  to  trial  for  this  indifference,  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  find  a grand  jury 
to  sustain  the  indictment.  He  was  really  brought 
to  trial  because  he  had  broken  the  implied  con- 
tract with  the  politicians;  he  had  devised  illicit 
and  damaging  methods  to  express  that  instinct 
for  protecting  youth  and  innocence,  which  every 
man  on  the  police  force  doubtless  possesses. 
Were  this  instinct  freed  from  all  political  and 
extra  legal  control,  it  would  in  and  of  itself  be  a 
tremendous  force  against  commercialized  vice 
which  is  so  dependent  upon  the  exploitation  of 
young  girls.  Yet  the  fortunes  of  the  police  are 
so  tied  up  to  those  who  profit  by  this  trade  and 
to  their  friends,  the  politicians,  that  the  most 
well-meaning  man  upon  the  force  is  constantly 
handicapped.  Several  illustrations  of  this  occur 
to  me.  Two  years  ago,  when  very  untoward 
conditions  were  discovered  in  connection  with  a 
certain  five-cent  theatre,  a young  policeman 
arrested  the  proprietor,  who  was  later  brought 


44 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


before  the  grand  jury,  indicted  and  released  upon 
bail  for  nine  thousand  dollars.  The  crime  was 
a heinous  one,  involving  the  ruin  of  fourteen 
little  girls;  but  so  much  political  influence  had 
been  exerted  on  behalf  of  the  proprietor,  who  was 
a relative  of  the  republican  committeeman  of 
his  ward,  that  although  the  license  of  the  theatre 
was  immediately  revoked,  it  was  reissued  to 
his  wife  within  a very  few  days  and  the  man 
continued  to  be  a menace  to  the  community. 
When  the  yoimg  policeman  who  had  made  the 
arrest  saw  him  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  theatre 
talking  to  little  girls  and  reported  him,  the  officer 
was  taken  severely  to  task  by  the  highest  repub- 
lican authority  in  the  city.  He  was  reprimanded 
for  his  activity  and  ordered  transferred  to  the 
stockyards,  eleven  miles  away.  The  policeman 
well  understood  that  this  was  but  the  first  step 
in  the  process  called  “breaking;”  that  after  he 
had  moved  his  family  to  the  stockyards,  in  a 
few  weeks  he  would  be  transferred  elsewhere, 
and  that  this  change  of  beat  would  be  continued 
until  he  should  at  last  be  obliged  to  resign  from 
the  force.  His  offence,  as  he  was  plainly  told, 
had  been  his  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  the  theatre 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


45 


was  under  political  protection.  In  short,  the 
young  officer  had  naively  undertaken  to  serve 
the  public  without  waiting  for  his  instructions 
from  the  political  bosses. 

A flagrant  example  of  the  collusion  of  the  police 
with  vice  is  instanced  by  United  States  District 
Attorney  Sims,  who  recently  called  upon  the 
Chicago  police  to  make  twenty-four  arrests 
on  behalf  of  the  United  States  government  for 
violations  of  the  white  slave  law,  when  all  of  the 
men  liable  to  arrest  left  town  two  hours  after 
the  warrants  were  issued.  To  quote  Mr.  Sims: 
“We  sent  the  secret  service  men  who  had  been 
working  in  conjunction  with  the  police  back  to 
Washington  and  brought  in  a fresh  supply. 
These  men  did  not  work  with  the  police,  and 
within  two  weeks  after  the  first  set  of  secret 
service  men  had  left  Chicago,  the  men  we  wanted 
were  back  in  town,  and  without  the  aid  of  the 
city  police  we  arrested  all  of  them.” 

When  the  legal  control  of  commercialized  vice 
is  thus  tied  up  with  city  politics  the  functions 
of  the  police  become  legislative,  executive  and 
judicial  in  regard  to  street  solicitation:  in  u,  sense 
they  also  have  power  of  license,  for  it  lies  with 


46 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


them  to  determine  the  number  of  women  who 
are  allowed  to  ply  their  trade  upon  the  street. 
Some  of  these  women  are  young  earthlings,  as  it 
were,  hoping  to  earn  money  for  much-desired 
clothing  or  pleasure.  Others  are  desperate  crea- 
tures making  one  last  effort  before  they  enter  a 
public  hospital  to  face  a miserable  end;  but  by 
far  the  larger  number  are  sent  out  under  the 
protection  of  the  men  who  profit  by  their  earnings, 
or  they  are  utilized  to  secure  patronage  for  dis- 
reputable houses.  The  police  regard  the  latter 
“as  regular,”  and  while  no  authoritative  order  is 
ever  given,  the  patrolman  understands  that  they 
are  protected.  On  the  other  hand,  “the  strag- 
gler” is  fiable  to  be  arrested  by  any  officer  who 
chooses,  and  she  is  subjected  to  a fine  upon  his 
unsupported  word.  In  either  case  the  pofice 
regard  all  such  women  as  literally  “abandoned,” 
deprived  of  ordinary  rights,  obliged  to  live  in 
specified  residences,  and  liable  to  have  their 
personal  liberties  invaded  in  a way  that  no  other 
class  of  citizens  would  tolerate. 

The  recent  establishment  of  the  Night  Court  in 
New  York  registers  an  advance  in  regard  to  the 
treatment  of  these  WTetched  women.  Not  only 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


47 


does  the  public  gradually  become  cognizant  of 
the  treatment  accorded  them,  but  some  attempt 
at  discrimination  is  made  between  the  first  offen- 
ders and  those  hardened  by  long  practice  in  that 
most  hideous  of  occupations.  Furthermore,  an 
adult  probation  system  is  gradually  being  sub- 
stituted for  the  system  of  fines  which  at  present 
are  levied  in  such  wise  as  to  virtually  constitute 
a license  and  a partnership  with  the  police  de- 
partment. 

While  American  cities  cannot  be  said  to  have 
adopted  a policy  either  of  suppression  or  one  of 
regulation,  because  the  police  consider  the  former 
impracticable  and  the  latter  intolerable  to  public 
opinion,  we  may  perhaps  claim  for  America  a little 
more  humanity  in  its  dealing  with  this  class  of 
women,  a little  less  ruthlessness  than  that  exhib- 
ited by  the  continental  cities  where  reglementa- 
tion  is  relentlessly  assumed. 

The  suggestive  presence  of  such  women  on  the 
streets  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  demoralizing 
influences  to  be  found  in  a large  city,  and  such 
vigorous  efforts  as  were  recently  made  by  a former 
chief  of  police  in  Chicago  when  he  successfully 
cleared  the  streets  of  their  presence,  demonstrates 


48 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


that  legal  suppression  is  possible.  At  least  this 
obvious  temptation  to  young  men  and  boys  who 
are  idly  walking  the  streets  might  be  avoided,  for 
in  an  old  formula  one  such  woman  “has  cast 
down  many  wounded;  yea,  many  strong  men 
have  been  slain  by  her.  ” Were  the  streets  kept 
clear,  many  young  girls  would  be  spared  familiar 
knowledge  that  such  a method  of  earning  money 
is  open  to  them.  I have  personally  known 
several  instances  in  which  young  girls  have  begun 
street  solicitation  through  sheer  imitation.  A 
young  Polish  woman  found  herself  in  dire 
straits  after  the  death  of  her  mother.  Her  only 
friends  in  America  had  moved  to  New  York, 
she  was  in  debt  for  hei*  mother’s  funeral,  and  as 
it  was  the  slack  season  of  the  miserable  sweat- 
shop sewing  she  had  been  doing,  she  was  unable  to 
find  work.  One  evening  when  she  was  quite 
desperate  with  hunger,  she  stopped  several  men 
upon  the  street,  as  she  had  seen  other  girls  do, 
and  in  her  broken  English  asked  them  for  some- 
thing to  eat.  Only  after  a young  man  had  given 
her  a good  meal  at  a restaurant  did  she  realize 
the  price  she  was  expected  to  pay  and  the  horrible 
things  which  the  other  girls  were  doing.  Even 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


49 


in  her  shocked  revolt  she  could  not  understand, 
of  course,  that  she  herself  epitomized  that  hideous 
choice  between  starvation  and  vice  which  is 
perhaps  the  crowning  disgrace  of  civilization. 

The  legal  suppression  of  street  solicitation 
would  not  only  protect  girls  but  would  enor- 
mously minimize  the  risk  and  temptation  to  boys. 
The  entire  system  of  recruiting  for  commercial- 
ized vice  is  largely  dependent  upon  boys  who  are 
scarcely  less  the  victims  of  the  system  than  are 
the  girls  themselves.  Certainly  this  aspect  of 
the  situation  must  be  seriously  considered. 

In  1908,  when  Mr.  Clifford  Roe  conducted 
successful  prosecutions  against  one  hundred  and 
fifty  of  these  disreputable  young  men  in  Chicago, 
nearly  all  of  them  were  local  boys  who  had 
used  their  personal  acquaintance  to  secure 
their  victims.  The  accident  of  a long  ac- 
quaintance with  one  of  these  boys,  born 
in  the  Hull  - House  neighborhood,  filled  me 
with  questionings  as  to  how  far  society  may 
be  responsible  for  these  wretched  lads,  many  of 
them  beginning  a vicious  career  when  they  are 
but  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age.  Because  the 
trade  constantly  demands  very  young  girls,  the 


50 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


procurers  require  the  assistance  of  immature 
boys,  for  in  this  game  above  all  others  “youth 
calls  to  youth.”  Such  a boy  is  often  incited  by 
the  professional  procurer  to  ruin  a young  girl, 
because  the  latter’s  position  is  much  safer  if  the 
character  of  the  girl  is  blackened  before  he  sells 
her,  and  if  he  himself  cannot  be  implicated  in 
her  downfall.  He  thus  keeps  himself  within  the 
letter  of  the  law,  and  when  he  is  even  more  cau- 
tious, he  induces  the  boy  to  go  through  the  cere- 
mony of  a legal  marriage  by  promising  him  a 
percentage  of  his  wife’s  first  earnings. 

Only  yesterday  I received  a letter  from  a 
young  man  whom  I had  known  from  his  early 
boyhood,  written  in  the  state  penitentiary,  where 
he  is  serving  a life  sentence.  His  father  was  a 
drunkard,  but  his  mother  was  a fine  woman,  de- 
voted to  her  children,  and  she  had  patiently  sup- 
ported her  son  Jim  far  beyond  his  school  age.  At 
the  time  of  his  trial,  she  pawned  all  her  personal 
possessions  and  mortgaged  her  furniture  in  order 
to  get  three  hundred  dollars  for  his  lawyer. 
Although  Jim  usually  led  the  life  of  a loafer 
and  had  never  supported  his  mother,  he  was 
affectionately  devoted  to  her  and  always  kindly 
and  good-natured.  Perhaps  it  was  because  he 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


51 


had  been  so  long  dependent  upon  a self-sacrificing 
woman  that  it  became  easy  for  him  to  be  depend- 
ent upon  his  wife,  a girl  whom  he  met  when  he 
was  temporarily  acting  as  porter  in  a disreputable 
hotel.  Through  his  long  familiarity  with  vice, 
and  the  fact  that  many  of  his  companions  habitu- 
ally lived  upon  the  earnings  of  “their  girls,”  he 
easily  consented  that  his  wife  should  continue 
her  life,  and  he  constantly  accepted  the  money 
which  she  willingly  gave  him.  After  his  marriage 
he  still  lived  in  his  mother’s  house  and  refused  to 
take  more  money  from  her,  but  she  had  no  idea 
of  the  source  of  his  income.  One  day  he  called 
at  the  hotel,  as  usual,  to  ask  for  his  wife’s  earnings, 
and  in  a quarrel  over  the  amount  with  the  land- 
lady of  the  house,  he  drew  a revolver  and  killed 
her.  Although  the  plea  of  self-defense  was 
urged  in  the  trial,  his  abominable  manner  of  life 
so  outraged  both  judge  and  jury  that  he  received 
the  maximum  sentence.  His  mother  still  insists 
that  he  sincerely  loved  the  girl,  whom  he  so 
impulsively  married  and  that  he  constantly  tried 
to  dissuade  her  from  her  evil  life.  Certain  it 
is  that  Jim’s  wife  and  mother  are  both  filled  with 
genuine  sorrow  for  his  fate  and  that  in  some  wise 
the  educational  and  social  resources  in  the  city 


52 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE 


of  his  birth  failed  to  protect  him  from  his  own 
lower  impulses  and  from  the  evil  companionship 
whose  influence  he  could  not  withstand.  He  is 
but  one  of  thousands  of  weak  boys,  who  are  con- 
stantly utilized  to  supply  the  white  slave  trafficker 
with  young  girls,  for  it  has  been  estimated  that 
at  any  given  moment  the  majority  of  the  girls 
utilized  by  the  trade  are  under  twenty  years  of 
age  and  that  most  of  them  were  procured  when 
younger.  We  cannot  assume  that  the  youths  who 
are  hired  to  entice  and  entrap  these  girls  are  all 
young  fiends,  degenerate  from  birth;  the  majority 
of  them  are  merely  out-of-work  boys,  idle  upon 
the  streets,  who  readily  lend  themselves  to  these 
base  demands  because  nothing  else  is  presented 
to  them. 

All  the  recent  investigations  have  certainly 
made  clear  that  the  bulk  of  the  entire  traffic  is 
conducted  with  the  youth  of  the  community,  and 
that  the  social  evil,  ancient  though  it  may  be, 
must  be  renewed  in  our  generation  through  its 
younger  members.  The  knowledge  of  the  youth 
of  its  victims  doubtless  in  a measure  accounts 
for  the  new  sense  of  compunction  which  fills  the 
community. 


AMELIORATION  OF 
ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS 


CHAPTER  III 


AMELIORATION  OF  ECONOMIC 
CONDITIONS 

It  may  be  possible  to  extract  some  small  de- 
gree of  comfort  from  the  recent  revelations  of  the 
white  slave  traffic  when  we  reflect  that  at  the 
present  moment,  in  the  midst  of  a freedom  such 
as  has  never  been  accorded  to  young  women  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  under  an  economic 
pressure  grinding  down  upon  the  working  girl 
at  the  very  age  when  she  most  wistfully  desires 
to  be  taken  care  of,  it  is  necessary  to  organize  a 
widespread  commercial  enterprise  in  order  to 
procure  a sufficient  number  of  girls  for  the  white 
slave  market. 

Certainly  the  larger  freedom  accorded  to  woman 
by  our  changing  social  customs  and  the  phenome- 
nal number  of  young  girls  who  are  utilized  by 
modern  industry,  taken  in  connection  with  this 
lack  of  supply,  would  seem  to  show  that  the 
chastity  of  women  is  holding  its  own  in  that 


56  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

slow-growing  civilization  which  ever  demands 
more  self-control  and  conscious  direction  on  the 
part  of  the  individuals  sharing  it. 

Successive  reports  of  the  United  States  census 
indicate  that  self-supporting  girls  are  increasing 
steadily  in  number  each  decade,  until  59  per  cent, 
of  all  the  young  women  in  the  nation  between 
the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty,  are  engaged  in 
some  gainful  occupation.  Year  after  year,  as  these 
figures  increase,  the  public  views  them  with  com- 
placency, almost  vdth  pride,  and  confidently 
depends  upon  the  inner  restraint  and  training  of 
this  girlish  multitude  to  protect  it  from  dis- 
aster. Nevertheless,  the  public  is  totally  unable 
to  determine  at  what  moment  these  safeguards, 
evolved  under  former  industrial  conditions,  may 
reach  a breaking  point,  not  because  of  economic 
freedom,  but  because  of  untoward  economic 
conditions. 

For  the  first  time  in  history  multitudes  of 
women  are  laboring  without  the  direct  stimulus 
of  family  interest  or  affection,  and  they  are  also 
unable  to  proportion  their  hours  of  work  and 
intervals  of  rest  according  to  their  strength;  in 
addition  to  this  for  thousands  of  them  the  effort 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


57 


to  obtain  a livelihood  fairly  eclipses  the  very 
meaning  of  life  itself.  At  the  present  moment 
no  student  of  modern  industrial  conditions  can 
possibly  assert  how  far  the  superior  chastity  of 
woman,  so  rigidly  maintained  during  the  cen- 
turies, has  been  the  result  of  her  domestic  sur- 
roundings, and  certainly  no  one  knows  under  what 
degree  of  economic  pressure  the  old  restraints 
may  give  way. 

In  addition  to  the  monotony  of  work  and  the 
long  hours,  the  small  wages  these  girls  receive 
have  no  relation  to  the  standard  of  living  which 
they  are  endeavoring  to  maintain.  Discouraged 
and  over-fatigued,  they  are  often  brought  into 
sharp  juxtaposition  with  the  women  who  are 
obtaining  much  larger  returns  from  their  illicit 
trade.  Society  also  ventures  to  capitalize  a 
virtuous  girl  at  much  less  than  one  who  has 
yielded  to  temptation,  and  it  may  well  hold  itself 
responsible  for  the  precarious  position  into  which, 
year  after  year,  a multitude  of  frail  girls  is  placed. 

The  very  valuable  report  recently  issued  by 
the  vice  commission  of  Chicago  leaves  no  room 
for  doubt  upon  this  point.  The  report  estimates 
the  yearly  profit  of  this  nefarious  business  as 


58 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


conducted  in  Chicago  to  be  between  fifteen  and 
sixteen  millions  of  dollars.  Although  these  enor- 
mous profits  largely  accrue  to  the  men  who  con- 
duct the  business  side  of  prostitution,  the  re- 
port emphasizes  the  fact  that  the  average  girl 
earns  very  much  more  in  such  a life  than  she  can 
hope  to  earn  by  any  honest  work.  It  points 
out  that  the  capitalized  value  of  the  average 
working  girl  is  six  thousand  dollars,  as  she  ordi- 
narily earns  six  dollars  a week,  which  is  three 
hundred  dollars  a year,  or  five  per  cent,  on  that 
sum.  A girl  who  sells  drinks  in  a disreputable 
saloon,  earning  in  commissions  for  herself  twenty- 
one  dollars  a week,  is  capitalized  at  a value  of 
twenty-two  thousand  dollars.  The  report  fur- 
ther estimates  that  the  average  girl  who  enters 
an  illicit  life  under  a protector  or  manager  is 
able  to  earn  twenty-five  dollars  a week,  repre- 
senting a capital  of  twenty-six  thousand  dollars. 
In  other  words,  a girl  in  such  a life  “earns more 
than  four  times  as  much  as  she  is  worth  as  a 
factor  in  the  social  and  industrial  economy,  where 
brains,  intelligence,  virtue  and  womanly  charm 
should  bring  a premium.”  The  argument  is 
specious  in  that  it  does  not  record  the  economic 


'AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


59 


value  of  the  many  later  years  in  which  the  honest 
girl  will  live  as  wife  and  mother,  in  contrast  to 
the  premature  death  of  the  woman  in  the  illicit 
trade,  but  the  girl  herself  sees  only  the  difference 
in  the  immediate  earning  possibilities  in  the  two 
situations. 

Nevertheless  the  supply  of  girls  for  the  white 
slave  traffic  so  far  falls  below  the  demand  that 
large  business  enterprises  have  been  de\  eloped 
throughout  the  world  in  order  to  secure  a suffi- 
cient number  of  victims  for  this  modern  market. 
Over  and  over  again  in  the  criminal  proceedings 
against  the  men  engaged  in  this  traffic,  when 
questioned  as  to  their  motives,  they  have  given 
the  simple  reply  “that  more  girls  are  needed”, 
and  that  they  were  “promised  big  money  for 
them”.  Although  economic  pressure  as  a reason 
for  entering  an  illicit  life  has  thus  been  brought 
out  in  court  by  the  evidence  in  a surprising  num- 
ber of  cases,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  often 
exaggerated;  a girl  always  prefers  to  think  that 
economic  pressure  is  the  reason  for  her  downfall, 
even  when  the  immediate  causes  have  been  her 
love  of  pleasure,  her  desire  for  finery,  or 
the  influence  of  evil  companions.  It  is  easy 


60 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


for  her,  as  for  all  of  us,  to  be  deceived  as  to 
real  motives.  In  addition  to  this  the  wretched 
girl  who  has  entered  upon  an  illicit  life  finds  the 
experience  so  terrible  that,  day  by  day,  she  en- 
deavors to  justify  herself  with  the  excuse  that 
the  money  she  earns  is  needed  for  the  support  of 
some  one  dependent  upon  her,  thus  following 
habits  established  by  generations  of  virtuous 
women  who  cared  for  feeble  folk.  I know  one 
such  girl  living  in  a disreputable  house  in  Chicago 
who  has  adopted  a delicate  child  aflBicted  with 
curvature  of  the  spine,  whom  she  boards  with 
respectable  people  and  keeps  for  many  w'eeks  out 
of  each  year  in  an  expensive  sanitarium  that  it 
may  receive  medical  treatment.  The  mother  of 
the  child,  an  inmate  of  the  house  in  which  the 
ardent  foster-mother  herself  lives,  is  quite 
indifferent  to  the  child’s  welfare  and  also  rather 
amused  at  such  solicitude.  The  girl  has  per- 
severed in  her  course  for  five  years,  never  however 
allowing  the  little  invalid  to  come  to  the  house  in 
which  she  and  the  mother  live.  The  same  sort 
of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  is  often  poured 
out  upon  the  miserable  man  who  in  the  beginiung 
was  responsible  for  the  girl’s  entrance  into  the 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


61 


life  and  who  constantly  receives  her  earnings. 
She  supports  him  in  the  luxurious  life  he  may  be 
living  in  another  part  of  the  town,  takes  an 
almost  maternal  pride  in  his  good  clothes  and 
general  prosperity,  and  regards  him  as  the  one 
person  in  all  the  world  who  understands  her 
plight. 

Most  of  the  cases  of  economic  responsibility, 
however,  are  not  due  to  chivalric  devotion,  but 
arise  from  a desire  to  fulfill  family  obligations 
such  as  would  be  accepted  by  any  conscientious 
girl.  This  was  clearly  revealed  in  conversations 
which  were  recently  held  with  thirty-four  girls, 
who  were  living  at  the  same  time  in  a rescue 
home,  when  twenty-two  of  them  gave  economic 
pressure  as  the  reason  for  choosing  the  life  which 
they  had  so  recently  abandoned.  One  piteous 
little  widow  of  seventeen  had  been  supporting 
her  child  and  had  been  able  to  leave  the  life  she 
had  been  leading  only  because  her  married  sister 
offered  to  take  care  of  the  baby  without  the  money 
formerly  paid  her.  Another  had  been  supporting 
her  mother  and  only  since  her  recent  death  was 
the  girl  sure  that  she  could  live  honestly  because 
she  had  only  herself  to  care  for. 


62 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


The  following  story,  fairly  typical  of  the 
twenty-two  involving  economic  reasons,  is  of  a 
girl  who  had  come  to  Chicago  at  the  age  of 
fifteen,  from  a small  town  in  Indiana.  Her 
father  was  too  old  to  work  and  her  mother  was 
a dependent  invalid.  The  brother  who  cared 
for  the  parents,  with  the  help  of  the  girl’s  own 
slender  wages  earned  in  the  country  store  of  the 
little  town,  became  ill  with  rheumatism.  In  her 
desire  to  earn  more  money  the  country  girl  came 
to  the  nearest  large  city,  Chicago,  to  work  in  a 
department  store.  The  highest  wage  she  could 
earn,  even  though  she  wore  long  dresses  and  called 
herself  “experienced,”  was  five  dollars  a week. 
This  sum  was  of  course  inadequate  even  for 
her  own  needs  and  she  was  constantly  filled  with 
a corroding  worry  for  “the  folks  at  home.”  In 
a moment  of  panic,  a fellow  clerk  who  was  “wise” 
showed  her  that  it  was  possible  to  add  to  her 
wages  by  making  appointments  for  money  in 
the  noon  hour  at  down-town  hotels.  Having 
earned  money  in  this  way  for  a few  months, 
the  young  girl  made  an  arrangement  with  an 
older  woman  to  be  on  call  in  the  evenings  when- 
ever she  was  summoned  by  telephone,  thus  join- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


63 


ing  that  large  clandestine  group  of  apparently 
respectable  girls,  most  of  whom  yield  to  tempta- 
tion only  when  hard  pressed  by  debt  incurred 
during  illness  or  non-employment,  or  when  they 
are  facing  some  immediate  necessity.  This 
practice  has  become  so  general  in  the  larger  Amer- 
ican cities  as  to  be  systematically  conducted. 
It  is  perhaps  the  most  sinister  outcome  of  the 
economic  pressure,  unless  one  cites  its  corollary 
— the  condition  of  thousands  of  young  men  whose 
low  salaries  so  cruelly  and  unjustifiably  postpone 
their  marriages.  For  a long  time  the  young 
saleswoman  kept  her  position  in  the  department 
store,  retaining  her  honest  wages  for  herself, 
but  sending  everything  else  to  her  family.  At 
length  however,  she  changed  from  her  clandes- 
tine life  to  an  openly  professional  one  when  she 
needed  enough  money  to  send  her  brother  to 
Hot  Springs,  Arkansas,  where  she  maintained 
him  for  a year.  She  explained  that  because  he 
was  now  restored  to  health  and  able  to  support 
the  family  once  more,  she  had  left  the  life  “for- 
ever and  ever”,  expecting  to  return  to  her  home 
in  Indiana.  She  suspected  that  her  brother 
knew  of  her  experience,  although  she  was  sure 


64  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

that  her  parents  did  not,  and  she  hoped  that  as 
she  was  not  yet  seventeen,  she  might  be  able  to 
make  a fresh  start.  Fortunately  the  poor  child 
did  not  know  how  difficult  that  would  be. 

It  is  perhaps  in  the  department  store  more  than 
anywhere  else  that  every  possible  weakness  in 
a girl  is  detected  and  traded  upon.  For  while 
it  is  true  that  “wherever  many  girls  are  gathered 
together  more  or  less  unprotected  and  embroiled 
in  the  struggle  for  a livelihood,  near  by  will  be 
hovering  the  procurers  and  evil-minded”,  no 
other  place  of  employment  is  so  easy  of  access 
as  the  department  store.  No  visitor  is  received 
in  a factory  or  office  unless  he  has  definite  busi- 
ness there,  whereas  every  purchaser  is  welcome 
at  a department  store,  even  a notorious  woman 
well  known  to  represent  the  demi-monde  trade 
is  treated  with  marked  courtesy  if  she  spends 
large  sums  of  money.  The  primary  danger  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  comely  saleswomen  are  thus 
easy  of  access.  The  disreputable  young  man  con- 
stantly passes  in  and  out,  making  small  purchases 
from  every  pretty  girl,  opening  an  acquaint- 
ance with  complimentary  remarks;  or  the  pro- 
curess, a fashionably-dressed  woman,  buys  cloth- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


65 


ing  in  large  amounts,  sometimes  for  a young 
girl  by  her  side,  ostensibly  her  daughter.  She 
condoles  with  the  saleswoman  upon  her  hard  lot 
and  lack  of  pleasure,  and  in  the  role  of  a kindly, 
prosperous  matron  invites  her  to  come  to  her 
own  home  for  a good  time.  The  girl  is  sometimes 
subjected  to  temptation  through  the  men  and 
women  in  her  own  department,  who  tell  her  how 
invitations  to  dinners  and  theatres  may  be  pro- 
cured. It  is  not  surprising  that  so  many  of  these 
young,  inexperienced  girls  are  either  deceived  or 
yield  to  temptation  in  spite  of  the  efforts  made  to 
protect  them  by  the  management  and  by  the 
older  women  in  the  establishment. 

The  department  store  has  brought  together, 
as  has  never  been  done  before  in  history,  a be- 
wildering mass  of  delicate  and  beautiful  fabrics, 
jewelry  and  household  decorations  such  as 
women  covet,  gathered  skilfully  from  all  parts 
of  the  world,  and  in  the  midst  of  this  bulk  of  de- 
sirable possessions  is  placed  an  untrained  girl 
with  careful  instructions  as  to  her  conduct  for 
making  sales,  but  with  no  guidance  in  regard  to 
herself.  Such  a girl  may  be  bitterly  lonely, 
but  she  is  expected  to  smile  affably  all  day  long 


66 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


upon  a throng  of  changing  customers.  She  may 
be  without  adequate  clothing,  although  she 
stands  in  an  emporium  where  it  is  piled  about 
her,  literally  as  high  as  her  head.  She  may  be 
faint  for  want  of  food  but  she  may  not  sit  down 
lest  she  assume  “an  attitude  of  inertia  and 
indifference,”  which  is  against  the  rules.  She 
may  have  a great  desire  for  pretty  things,  but 
she  must  sell  to  other  people  at  least  twenty- 
five  times  the  amount  of  her  own  salary,  or  she 
will  not  be  retained.  Because  she  is  of  the  first 
generation  of  girls  which  has  stood  alone  in  the 
midst  of  trade,  she  is  clinging  and  timid,  and  yet 
the  only  person,  man  or  woman,  in  this  commer- 
cial atmosphere  who  speaks  to  her  of  the  care 
and  protection  which  she  craves,  is  seeking  to 
betray  her.  Because  she  is  young  and  feminine, 
her  mind  secretly  dwells  upon  a future  lover, 
upon  a home,  adorned  with  the  most  enticing 
of  the  household  goods  about  her,  upon  a child 
dressed  in  the  filmy  fabrics  she  tenderly  touches, 
and  yet  the  only  man  who  approaches  her  there 
acting  upon  the  knowledge  of  this  inner  life  of 
hers,  does  it  with  the  direct  intention  of  playing 
upon  it  in  order  to  despoil  her.  Is  it  surprising 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


67 


that  the  average  human  nature  of  these  young 
girls  cannot,  in  many  instances,  endure  this 
strain?  Of  fifteen  thousand  women  employed  in 
the  down-town  department  stores  of  Chicago,  the 
majority  are  Americans.  We  all  know  that  the 
American  girl  has  grown  up  in  the  belief  that 
the  world  is  hers  from  which  to  choose,  that 
there  is  ordinarily  no  limit  to  her  ambition  or  to 
her  definition  of  success.  She  realizes  that  she 
is  well  mannered  and  well  dressed  and  does  not 
appear  unlike  most  of  her  customers.  She  sees 
only  one  aspect  of  her  countrywomen  who  come 
shopping,  and  she  may  well  believe  that  the 
chief  concern  of  life  is  fashionable  clothing.  Her 
interest  and  ambition  almost  inevitably  become 
thoroughly  worldly,  and  from  the  very  fact  that 
she  is  employed  down  town,  she  obtains  an  ex- 
aggerated idea  of  the  luxury  of  the  illicit  life  all 
about  her,  which  is  barely  concealed. 

The  fifth  volume  of  the  report  of  “Women  and 
Child  Wage  Earners”  in  the  United  States  gives 
the  result  of  a careful  inquiry  into  “the  relation 
of  wages  to  the  moral  condition  of  department 
store  women.”  In  connection  with  this,  the 
investigators  secured  “the  personal  histories  of 


68 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


one  hundred  immoral  women,”  of  whom  ten 
were  or  had  been  employed  in  a department 
store.  They  found  that  while  only  one  of  the 
ten  had  been  directly  induced  to  leave  the  store 
for  a disreputable  life,  six  of  them  said  that  they 
had  found  “it  was  easier  to  earn  money  that 
way.”  The  report  states  that  the  average  em- 
ployee in  a department  store  earns  about  seven 
dollars  a week,  and  that  the  average  income  of 
the  one  hundred  immoral  women  covered  by  the 
personal  histories,  ranged  from  fifty  dollars  a 
week  to  one  hundred  dollars  a week  in  exceptional 
cases.  It  is  of  these  exceptional  cases  that  the 
department  store  girl  hears,  and  the  knowledge 
becomes  part  of  the  unreality  and  glittering  life 
that  is  all  about  her. 

Another  class  of  young  women  which  is  es- 
pecially exposed  to  this  alluring  knowledge  is 
the  waitress  in  down-tovm  cafes  and  restaur- 
ants. A recent  investigation  of  girls  in  the  seg- 
regated district  of  a neighboring  city  places 
waiting  in  restaurants  and  hotels  as  highest  on 
the  list  of  “previous  occupations.”  Many  wait- 
resses are  paid  so  little  that  they  gratefully  accept 
any  fee  which  men  may  offer  them.  It  is  also 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


69 


the  universal  habit  for  customers  to  enter  into 
easy  conversation  while  being  served.  Some  of 
them  are  lonely  young  men  who  have  few  oppor- 
tunities to  speak  to  women.  The  girl  often 
quite  innocently  accepts  an  invitation  for  an 
evening,  spent  either  in  a theatre  or  dance  hall, 
with  no  evil  results,  but  this  very  lack  of  social 
convention  exposes  her  to  danger.  Even  when  the 
proprietor  means  to  protect  the  girls,  a certain 
amount  of  familiarity  must  be  borne,  lest  their 
resentment  should  diminish  the  patronage  of 
the  cafe.  In  certain  restaurants,  moreover,  the 
waitresses  doubtless  suffer  because  the  patrons 
compare  them  with  the  girls  who  ply  their  trade 
in  disreputable  saloons  under  the  guise  of  serving 
drinks. 

The  following  story  would  show  that  mere 
friendly  propinquity  may  constitute  a danger. 
Last  summer  an  honest,  straightforward  girl  from 
a small  lake  town  in  northern  Michigan  was 
working  in  a Chicago  cafe,  sending  every  week 
more  than  half  of  her  wages  of  seven  dollars  to 
her  mother  and  little  sister,  ill  with  tuberculosis, 
at  home.  The  mother  owned  the  little  house  in 
which  she  lived,  but  except  for  the  vegetables 


70 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


she  raised  in  her  own  garden  and  an  occasional 
payment  for  plain  sewing,  she  and  her  younger 
daughter  were  dependent  upon  the  hard-working 
girl  in  Chicago.  The  girl’s  heart  grew  heavier 
week  by  week  as  the  mother’s  letters  reported 
that  the  sister  was  daily  growing  weaker.  One  hot 
day  in  August  she  received  a letter  from  her 
mother  telling  her  to  come  at  once  if  she  “would 
see  sister  before  she  died.”  At  noon  that  day 
when  sickened  by  the  hot  air  of  the  cafe,  and  when 
the  clatter  of  dishes,  the  buzz  of  conversation, 
the  orders  shouted  through  the  slide  seemed  but 
a hideous  accompaniment  to  her  tormented 
thoughts,  she  was  suddenly  startled  by  hearing 
the  name  of  her  native  town,  and  realized  that 
one  of  her  regular  patrons  was  saying  to  her 
that  he  meant  to  take  a night  boat  to  M.  at  8 
o’clock  and  get  out  of  this  “infernal  heat.” 
Almost  involuntarily  she  asked  him  if  he  would 
take  her  with  him.  Although  the  very  next 
moment  she  became  conscious  what  his  consent 
implied,  she  did  not  reveal  her  fright,  but  merely 
stipulated  that  if  she  went  with  him  he  must 
agree  to  buy  her  a return  ticket.  She  reached 
home  twelve  hours  before  her  sister  died,  but 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


71 


when  she  returned  to  Chicago  a week  later  bur- 
dened with  the  debt  of  an  undertaker’s  bill,  she 
realized  that  she  had  discovered  a means  of 
payment. 

All  girls  who  work  down  town  are  at  a dis- 
advantage as  compared  to  factory  girls,  who  are 
much  less  open  to  direct  inducement  and  to  the 
temptations  which  come  through  sheer  imitation. 
Factory  girls  also  have  the  protection  of  working 
among  plain  people  who  frankly  designate  an 
irregular  life  in  harsh,  old-fashioned  terms.  If 
a factory  girl  catches  sight  of  the  vicious  life  at 
all,  she  sees  its  miserable  victims  in  all  the  wretch- 
edness and  sordidness  of  their  trade  in  the  poorer 
parts  of  the  city.  As  she  passes  the  opening 
doors  of  a disreputable  saloon  she  may  see  for 
an  instant  three  or  four  listless  girls  urging  liquor 
upon  men  tired  out  with  the  long  day’s  work 
and  already  sodden  with  drink.  As  she  hurries 
along  the  street  on  a rainy  night  she  may  hear 
a sharp  cry  of  pain  from  a sick-looking  girl  whose 
arm  is  being  brutally  wrenched  by  a rough  man, 
and  if  she  stops  for  a moment  she  catches  his 
muttered  threats  in  response  to  the  girl’s  pleading 
“that  it  is  too  bad  a night  for  street  work.” 


72  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

She  sees  a passing  policeman  shrug  his  shoulders 
as  he  crosses  the  street,  and  she  vaguely  knows 
that  the  sick  girl  has  put  herself  beyond  the  pro- 
tection of  the  law,  and  that  the  rough  man  has 
an  understanding  with  the  oflScer  on  the  beat. 
She  has  been  told  that  certain  streets  are  “not 
respectable,”  but  a furtive  look  down  the  length 
of  one  of  them  reveals  only  forlorn  and  ill-looking 
houses,  from  which  all  suggestion  of  homely 
domesticity  has  long  since  gone;  a slovenly  woman 
with  hollow  eyes  and  a careworn  face  holding 
up  the  lurching  bulk  of  a drunken  man  is  all 
she  sees  of  its  “denizens,”  although  she  may  have 
known  a neighbor’s  daughter  who  came  home  to 
die  of  a mysterious  disease  said  to  be  the  result 
of  a “fast  life,”  and  whose  disgraced  mother 
“never  again  held  up  her  head.” 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  this  corrective  knowledge, 
the  increasing  nervous  energy  to  which  industrial 
processes  daily  acconunodate  themselves,  and 
the  speeding  up  constantly  required  of  the  oper- 
ators, may  at  any  moment  so  register  their  results 
upon  the  nervous  system  of  a factory  girl  as  to 
overcome  her  powers  of  resistance.  Many  a 
working  girl  at  the  end  of  a day  is  so  hysterical 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


73 


and  overwrought  that  her  mental  balance  is 
plainly  disturbed.  Hundreds  of  working  girls 
go  directly  to  bed  as  soon  as  they  have  eaten  their 
suppers.  They  are  too  tired  to  go  from  home 
for  recreation,  too  tired  to  read  and  often  too 
tired  to  sleep.  A humane  forewoman  recently 
said  to  me  as  she  glanced  down  the  long  room  in 
which  hundreds  of  young  women,  many  of  them 
with  their  shoes  beside  them,  were  standing:  “I 
hate  to  think  of  all  the  aching  feet  on  this  floor; 
these  girls  all  have  trouble  with  their  feet,  some 
of  them  spend  the  entire  evening  bathing  them 
in  hot  water.”  But  aching  feet  are  no  more 
usual  than  aching  backs  and  aching  heads.  The 
study  of  industrial  diseases  has  only  this  year 
been  begun  by  the  federal  authorities,  and  doubt- 
less as  more  is  known  of  the  nervous  and  mental 
effect  of  over-fatigue,  many  moral  breakdowns 
will  be  traced  to  this  source.  It  is  already  easy 
to  make  the  connection  in  definite  cases:  “I 
was  too  tired  to  care,”  “I  was  too  tired  to  know 
what  I was  doing,”  “I  was  dead  tired  and  sick 
of  it  all,”  “I  was  dog  tired  and  just  went 
with  him,”  are  phrases  taken  from  the  lips 
of  reckless  girls  who  are  endeavoring  to 


74 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


explain  the  situation  in  which  they  find  them- 
selves. 

Only  slowly  are  laws  being  enacted  to  limit  the 
hours  of  working  women,  yet  the  able  brief  pre- 
sented to  the  United  States  supreme  court  on 
the  constitutionality  of  the  Oregon  ten-hour  law 
for  women,  based  its  plea  upon  the  results  of 
overwork  as  affecting  women’s  health,  the 
grave  medical  statement  constantly  broken  into 
by  a portrayal  of  the  disastrous  effects  of  over- 
fatigue upon  character.  It  is  as  yet  difficult  to 
distinguish  between  the  results  of  long  hours 
and  the  results  of  overstrain.  Certainly  the 
constant  sense  of  haste  is  one  of  the  most  nerve- 
racking  and  exhausting  tests  to  which  the  human 
system  can  be  subjected.  Those  girls  in  the 
sewing  industry  whose  mothers  thread  needles 
for  them  far  into  the  night  that  they  may  sew 
without  a moment’s  interruption  during  the 
next  day;  those  girls  who  insert  eyelets  into 
shoes,  for  which  they  are  paid  two  cents  a case, 
each  case  containing  twenty-four  pairs  of  shoes, 
are  striking  victims  of  the  over-speeding  which  is 
so  characteristic  of  our  entire  factory  system. 

Girls  working  in  factories  and  laundries  are 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


75 


also  open  to  the  possibilities  of  accidents.  The 
loss  of  only  two  fingers  upon  the  right  hand,  or 
a broken  wrist,  may  disqualify  an  operator  from 
continuing  in  the  only  work  in  which  she  is 
skilled  and  make  her  struggle  for  respecta- 
bility even  more  difficult.  Varicose  veins  and 
broken  arches  in  the  feet  are  found  in  every  occu- 
pation in  which  women  are  obliged  to  stand  for 
hours,  but  at  any  moment  either  one  may  develop 
beyond  purely  painful  symptoms  into  crippling 
incapacity.  One  such  girl  recently  returning 
home  after  a long  day’s  work  deliberately  sat 
down  upon  the  floor  of  a crowded  street  car, 
explaining  defiantly  to  the  conductor  and  the 
bewildered  passengers  that  “her  feet  would  not 
hold  out  another  minute.  ” A young  woman  who 
only  last  summer  broke  her  hand  in  a mangle  was 
found  in  a rescue  home  in  January,  explaining  her 
recent  experience  by  the  phrase  that  she  was  “up 
against  it  when  leaving  the  hospital  in  October.” 

In  spite  of  many  such  heart-breaking  instances 
the  movement  for  safeguarding  machinery  and 
securing  indemnity  for  industrial  accidents  pro- 
ceeds all  too  slowly.  At  a recent  exhibition  in 
Boston  the  knife  of  a miniature  guillotine  fell 


76 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


every  ten  seconds  to  indicate  the  rate  of  industrial 
accidents  in  the  United  States.  Grisly  as  was 
the  device,  its  hideousness  might  well  have  been 
increased  had  it  been  able  to  demonstrate  the 
connection  between  certain  of  these  accidents 
and  the  complete  moral  disaster  which  overtook 
their  victims. 

Yet  factory  girls  who  are  subjected  to  this 
overstrain  and  overtime  often  find  their  greatest 
discouragement  in  the  fact  that  after  all  their 
efforts  they  earn  too  little  to  support  themselves. 
One  girl  said  that  she  had  first  yielded  to  tempta- 
tion when  she  had  become  utterly  discouraged 
because  she  had  tried  in  vain  for  seven  months 
to  save  enough  money  for  a pair  of  shoes.  She 
habitually  spent  two  dollars  a week  for  her  room, 
three  dollars  for  her  board,  and  sixty  cents  a 
week  for  carfare,  and  she  had  found  the  forty 
cents  remaining  from  her  weekly  wage  of  six 
dollars  inadequate  to  do  more  than  re-sole  her 
old  shoes  twice.  When  the  shoes  became  too 
worn  to  endure  a third  soling  and  she  possessed 
but  ninety  cents  towards  a new  pair,  she  gave 
up  her  struggle;  to  use  her  own  contemptuous 
phrase,  she  “sold  out  for  a pair  of  shoes.” 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


77 


Usually  the  phrases  are  less  graphic,  but  after 
all  they  contain  the  same  dreary  meaning: 
“Couldn’t  make  both  ends  meet,”  “I  had  always 
been  used  to  having  nice  things,”  “Couldn’t 
make  enough  money  to  live  on,”  “I  got  sick  and 
ran  behind,”  “Needed  more  money,”  “Impos- 
sible to  feed  and  clothe  myself,”  “Out  of  work, 
hadn’t  been  able  to  save.”  Of  course  a girl  in 
such  a strait  does  not  go  out  deliberately  to  find 
illicit  methods  of  earning  money,  she  simply 
yields  in  a moment  of  utter  weariness  and  dis- 
couragement to  the  temptations  she  has  been 
able  to  withstand  up  to  that  moment.  The 
long  hours,  the  lack  of  comforts,  the  low  pay, 
the  absence  of  recreation,  the  sense  of  “good 
times”  all  about  her  which  she  cannot  share,  the 
conviction  that  she  is  rapidly  losing  health  and 
charm,  rouse  the  molten  forces  within  her.  A 
swelling  tide  of  self-pity  suddenly  storms  the 
banks  which  have  hitherto  held  her  and  finally 
overcomes  her  instincts  for  decency  and  right- 
eousness, as  well  as  the  habit  of  clean  living, 
established  by  generations  of  her  forebears. 

The  aphorism  that  “morals  fluctuate  with 
trade ’’was  long  considered  cynical,  but  it  has  been 


78 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


demonstrated  in  Berlin,  in  London,  in  Japan, 
as  well  as  in  several  American  cities,  that  there 
is  a distinct  increase  in  the  number  of  registered 
prostitutes  during  periods  of  financial  depression 
and  even  during  the  dull  season  of  leading  local 
industries.  Out  of  my  own  experience  I am  ready 
to  assert  that  very  often  all  that  is  necessary 
to  effectively  help  the  girl  who  is  on  the  edge  of 
wrong-doing  is  to  lend  her  money  for  her  board 
until  she  finds  work,  provide  the  necessary  cloth- 
ing for  which  she  is  in  such  desperate  need,  per- 
suade her  relatives  that  she  should  have  more 
money  for  her  own  expenditures,  or  find  her 
another  place  at  higher  wages.  Upon  such  simple 
economic  needs  does  the  tried  virtue  of  a good 
girl  sometimes  depend. 

Here  again  the  immigrant  girl  is  at  a disad- 
vantage. The  average  wage  of  two  hundred 
newly  arrived  girls  of  various  nationalities,  Poles, 
Italians,  Slovaks,  Bohemians,  Russians,  Gala- 
tians, Croatians,  Lithuanians,  Roumanians,  Ger- 
mans, and  Swedes,  who  were  interviewed  by  the 
Immigrants’  Protective  League,  was  four  dollars 
and  a half  a week  for  the  first  position  which 
they  had  been  able  to  secure  in  Chicago.  It 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


79 


often  takes  a girl  several  weeks  to  find  her  first 
place.  During  this  period  of  looking  for  work 
the  immigrant  girl  is  subjected  to  great  dangers. 
It  is  at  such  times  that  immigrants  often  exhibit 
symptoms  of  that  type  of  disordered  mind  which 
alienists  pronounce  “due  to  conflict  through 
poor  adaptation.”  I have  known  several  immi- 
grant young  men  as  well  as  girls  who  became 
deranged  during  the  first  year  of  life  in  America. 
A young  Russian  who  came  to  Chicago 
in  the  hope  of  obtaining  the  freedom  and 
self-development  denied  him  at  home,  after 
three  months  of  bitter  disillusionment,  with 
no  work  and  insufficient  food,  was  sent  to  the 
hospital  for  the  insane.  He  only  recovered 
after  a group  of  his  young  countrymen  devotedly 
went  to  see  him  each  week  with  promises  of 
work,  the  companionship  at  last  establishing  a 
sense  of  unbroken  association.  I also  recall  a 
Polish  girl  who  became  utterly  distraught  after 
weeks  of  sleeplessness  and  anxiety  because  she 
could  not  repay  fifty  dollars  which  she  had  bor- 
rowed from  a countryman  in  Chicago  for  the 
purpose  of  bringing  her  sister  to  America.  Her 
case  was  declared  hopeless,  but  when  the  creditor 


80 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


made  reassuring  visits  to  the  patient  she  began 
to  mend  and  now,  five  years  later,  is  not  only 
free  from  debt,  but  has  brought  over  the  rest  of 
the  family,  whose  united  earnings  are  slowly 
paying  for  a house  and  lot.  Psychiatry  is  de- 
monstrating the  after-effects  of  fear  upon  the 
minds  of  children,  but  little  has  yet  been  done  to 
show  how  far  that  fear  of  the  future,  arising  from 
economic  insecurity  in  the  midst  of  new  sur- 
roundings, has  superinduced  insanity  among 
newly  arrived  immigrants.  Such  a state  of 
nervous  bewilderment  and  fright,  added  to  that 
sense  of  expectation  which  youth  always  carries 
into  new  surroundings,  often  makes  it  easy  to 
exploit  the  virtue  of  an  immigrant  girl.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  she  is  almost  always  exploited 
industrially.  A Russian  girl  recently  took  a 
place  in  a Chicago  clothing  factory  at  twenty 
cents  a day,  without  in  the  least  knowing  that 
she  was  undercutting  the  wages  of  even  that 
ill-paid  industry.  This  girl  rented  a room  for  a 
dollar  a week  and  all  that  she  had  to  eat  was 
given  her  by  a friend  in  the  same  lodging  house, 
who  shared  her  own  scanty  fare  with  the  newcomer. 

In  the  clothing  industry  trade  unionism  has 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


81 


already  established  a minimum  wage  limit  for 
thousands  of  women  who  are  receiving  the  pro- 
tection and  discipline  of  trade  organization  and 
responding  to  the  tonic  of  self-help.  Low 
wages  will  doubtless  in  time  be  modified 
by  Minimum  Wage  Boards  representing  the 
government’s  stake  in  industry,  such  as  have 
been  in  successful  operation  for  many  years  in 
certain  British  colonies  and  are  now  being  insti- 
tuted in  England  itself.  As  yet  Massachusetts 
is  the  only  state  which  has  appointed  a special 
commission  to  consider  this  establishment  for 
America,  although  the  Industrial  Commission 
of  Wisconsin  is  empowered  to  investigate  wages 
and  their  effect  upon  the  standard  of  living. 

Anyone  who  has  lived  among  working  people 
has  been  surprised  at  the  docility  with  which 
grown-up  children  give  all  of  their  earnings 
to  their  parents.  This  is,  of  course,  especially 
true  of  the  daughters.  The  fifth  volume  of  the 
governmental  report  upon  “Women  and  Child 
Wage  Earners  in  the  United  States,”  quoted 
earlier,  gives  eighty-four  per  cent,  as  the  propor- 
tion of  working  girls  who  turn  in  all  of  their 
wages  to  the  family  fund.  In  most  cases  this 


82  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

is  done  voluntarily  and  cheerfully,  but  in  many 
instances  it  is  as  if  the  tradition  of  woman’s 
dependence  upon  her  family  for  support  held 
long  after  the  actual  fact  had  changed,  or  as  if 
the  tyranny  established  through  generations 
when  daughters  could  be  starved  into  submission 
to  a father’s  will,  continued  even  after  the  roles 
had  changed,  and  the  wages  of  the  girl  child 
supported  a broken  and  dissolute  father. 

An  over-restrained  girl,  from  whom  so  much  is 
exacted,  will  sometimes  begin  to  deceive  her 
family  by  failing  to  tell  them  when  she  has  had 
a raise  in  her  wages.  She  will  habitually  keep 
the  extra  amount  for  herself,  as  she  will  any 
overtime  pay  which  she  may  receive.  All  such 
money  is  invariably  spent  upon  her  own  clothing, 
which  she,  of  course,  cannot  wear  at  home,  but 
which  gives  her  great  satisfaction  upon  the 
streets. 

The  girl  of  the  crowded  tenements  has  no  room 
in  which  to  receive  her  friends  or  to  read  the 
books  through  which  she  shares  the  lives  of  as- 
sorted heroines,  or,  better  still,  dreams  of  them  as 
of  herself.  Even  if  the  living-room  is  not  full 
of  boarders  or  children  or  washing,  it  is  comfort- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


83 


able  neither  for  receiving  friends  nor  for  reading, 
and  she  finds  upon  the  street  her  entire  social 
field;  the  shop  windows  with  their  desirable  gar- 
ments hastily  clothe  her  heroines  as  they  travel 
the  old  roads  of  romance,  the  street  cars  rumbling 
noisily  by  suggest  a delectable  somewhere  far 
away,  and  the  young  men  who  pass  offer  possi- 
bilities of  the  most  delightful  acquaintance.  It 
is  not  astonishing  that  she  insists  upon  cloth- 
ing which  conforms  to  the  ideals  of  this  all- 
absorbing  street  and  that  she  will  unhesitatingly 
deceive  an  uncomprehending  family  which  does 
not  recognize  its  importance. 

One  such  girl  had  for  two  years  earned  money 
for  clothing  by  filling  regular  appointments  in  a 
disreputable  saloon  between  the  hours  of  six 
and  half-past  seven  in  the  evening.  With  this 
money  earned  almost  daily  she  bought  the 
clothes  of  her  heart’s  desire,  keeping  them  with 
the  saloon-keeper’s  wife.  She  demurely  returned 
to  her  family  for  supper  in  her  shabby  working 
clothes  and  presented  her  mother  with  her  un- 
opened pay  envelope  every  Saturday  night. 
She  began  this  life  at  the  age  of  fourteen  after 
her  Polish  mother  had  beaten  her  because  she 


84  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

had  “elbowed”  the  sleeves  and  “cut  out”  the 
neck  of  her  ungainly  calico  gown  in  a vain  at- 
tempt to  make  it  look  “American.”  Her 
mother,  who  had  so  conscientiously  punished  a 
daughter  who  was  “too  crazy  for  clothes,”  could 
never  of  course  comprehend  how  dangerous  a 
combination  is  the  girl  with  an  unsatisfied  love 
for  finery  and  the  opportunities  for  illicit  earning 
afforded  on  the  street.  Yet  many  sad  cases 
may  be  traced  to  such  lack  of  comprehension. 
Charles  Booth  states  that  in  England  a large 
proportion  of  parents  belonging  to  the  working 
and  even  lower  middle  classes,  are  unacquainted 
with  the  nature  of  the  lives  led  by  their  own 
daughters,  a result  doubtless  of  the  early  freedom 
of  the  street  accorded  city  children.  Too  often 
the  mothers  themselves  are  totally  ignorant  of 
covert  dangers.  A few  days  ago  I held  in  my 
hand  a pathetic  little  pile  of  letters  written  by 
a desperate  young  girl  of  fifteen  before  she  at- 
tempted to  commit  suicide.  These  letters  were 
addressed  to  her  lover,  her  girl  friends,  and  to 
the  head  of  the  rescue  home,  but  none  to  her 
mother  towards  whom  she  felt  a bitter  resentment 
“because  she  did  not  warn  me.”  The  poor 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


85 


mother  after  the  death  of  her  husband  had  gone 
to  live  with  a married  daughter,  but  as  the 
son-in-law  would  not  “take  in  two”  she  had  told 
the  youngest  daughter,  who  had  already  worked 
for  a year  as  an  apprentice  in  a dressmaking 
establishment,  that  she  must  find  a place  to  live 
with  one  of  her  girl  friends.  The  poor  child  had 
found  this  impossible,  and  three  days  after  the 
breaking  up  of  her  home  she  had  fallen  a victim 
to  a white  slave  trafiicker,  who  had  treated  her 
most  cruelly  and  subjected  her  to  unspeakable 
indignities.  It  was  only  when  her  “protector” 
left  the  city,  frightened  by  the  unwonted  activity 
of  the  police,  due  to  a wave  of  reform,  that  she 
found  her  way  to  the  rescue  home,  and  in  less 
than  five  months  after  the  death  of  her  father 
she  had  purchased  carbolic  acid  and  deliberately 
“courted  death  for  the  nameless  child”  and 
herself. 

Another  experience  during  which  a girl  faces 
a peculiar  danger  is  when  she  has  lost  one  “job” 
and  is  looking  for  another.  Naturally  she  loses 
her  place  in  the  slack  season  and  pursues  her 
search  at  the  very  moment  when  positions  are 
hardest  to  find,  and  her  un-employment  is  there- 


86 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


fore  most  prolonged.  Perhaps  nothing  in  our 
social  order  is  so  unorganized  and  inchoate  as 
our  method,  or  rather  lack  of  method,  of  plac- 
ing young  people  in  industry.  This  is  obvious 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  first  positions 
when  they  leave  school  at  the  unstable  age  of 
fourteen,  or  from  the  innumerable  places  they 
hold  later,  often  as  high  as  ten  a year,  when  they 
are  dismissed  or  change  voluntarily  through  sheer 
restlessness.  Here  again  a girl’s  difficulty  is  often 
increased  by  the  lack  of  sjunpathy  and  under- 
standing on  the  part  of  her  parents.  A girl 
is  often  afraid  to  say  that  she  has  lost  her  place 
and  pretends  to  go  to  work  each  morning  while 
she  is  looking  for  a new  one ; she  postpones  telling 
them  at  home  day  by  day,  growing  more  frantic 
as  the  usual  pay-day  approaches.  Some  girls 
borrow  from  loan  sharks  in  order  to  take  the  cus- 
tomary wages  to  their  parents,  others  fall  vic- 
tims to  unscrupulous  emplojunent  agencies  in 
their  eagerness  to  take  the  first  thing  offered. 

The  majority  of  these  girls  answer  the  adver- 
tisements in  the  daily  papers  as  affording  the 
cheapest  and  safest  way  to  secure  a position. 
These  out-of-work  girls  are  found,  sometimes  as 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


87 


many  as  forty  or  fifty  at  a time,  in  the  rest  rooms 
of  the  department  stores,  waiting  for  the  new 
edition  of  the  newspapers  after  they  have  been 
the  rounds  of  the  morning  advertisements  and 
have  found  nothing. 

Of  course  such  a possible  field  as  these  rest 
rooms  is  not  overlooked  by  the  procurer,  who 
finds  it  very  easy  to  establish  friendly  relations 
through  the  offer  of  the  latest  edition  of  the 
newspaper.  Even  pennies  are  precious  to  a girl 
out  of  work  and  she  is  also  easily  grateful  to  any- 
one who  expresses  an  interest  in  her  plight  and 
tells  her  of  a position.  Two  representatives  of 
the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  of  Chicago, 
during  a period  of  three  weeks,  arrested  and  con- 
victed seventeen  men  and  three  women  who 
were  plying  their  trades  in  the  rest  rooms  of  nine 
department  stores.  The  managers  were  greatly 
concerned  over  this  exposure  and  immediately 
arranged  both  for  more  intelligent  matrons  and 
greater  vigilance.  One  of  the  less  scrupulous 
stores  voluntarily  gave  up  a method  of  adver- 
tising carried  on  in  the  rest  room  itself  where  a 
demonstrator  from  “the  beauty  counter”  made 
up  the  faces  of  the  patrons  of  the  rest  room  with 


88 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


the  powder  and  paint  procurable  in  her  depart- 
ment below.  The  out-of-work  girls  especially 
availed  themselves  of  this  privilege  and  hoped 
that  their  search  would  be  easier  when  their 
pale,  woe-begone  faces  were  “made  beautiful.” 
The  poor  girls  could  not  know  that  a face  thus 
made  up  enormously  increased  their  risks. 

A number  of  girls  also  came  early  in  the  morn- 
ing as  soon  as  the  rest  rooms  were  open.  They 
washed  their  faces  and  arranged  their  hair  and 
then  settled  to  sleep  in  the  largest  and  easiest 
chairs  the  room  afforded.  Some  of  these  were 
out-of-work  girls  also  determined  to  take  home 
their  wages  at  the  end  of  the  week,  each  pre- 
tending to  her  mother  that  she  had  spent  the 
night  with  a girl  friend  and  was  working  all  day 
as  usual.  How  much  of  this  deception  is  due  to 
parental  tyranny  and  how  much  to  a sense  of 
responsibility  for  younger  children  or  invalids, 
it  is  impossible  to  estimate  until  the  number  of 
such  recorded  cases  is  much  larger.  Certain  it 
is  that  the  long  habit  of  obedience,  as  well  as  the 
feeling  of  family  obligation  established  from 
childhood,  is  often  utilized  by  the  white  slave 
traflScker. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


89 


Difficult  as  is  the  position  of  the  girl  out  of 
work  when  her  family  is  exigent  and  uncompre- 
hending, she  has  incomparably  more  protection 
than  the  girl  who  is  living  in  the  city  without  home 
ties.  Such  girls  form  sixteen  per  cent,  of  the 
working  women  of  Chicago.  With  absolutely 
every  penny  of  their  meagre  wages  consumed  in 
their  inadequate  living,  they  are  totally  unable 
to  save  money.  That  loneliness  and  detachment 
which  the  city  tends  to  breed  in  its  inhabitants 
is  easily  intensified  in  such  a girl  into  isolation 
and  a desolating  feeling  of  belonging  nowhere. 
All  youth  resents  the  sense  of  the  enormity  of 
the  universe  in  relation  to  the  insignificance  of 
the  individual  life,  and  youth,  with  that  intense 
self-consciousness  which  makes  each  young  per- 
son the  very  centre  of  all  emotional  experience, 
broods  over  this  as  no  older  person  can  possibly 
do.  At  such  moments  a black  oppression,  the 
instinctive  fear  of  solitude,  will  send  a lonely 
girl  restlessly  to  walk  the  streets  even  when  she 
is  “too  tired  to  stand,”  and  when  her  desire  for 
companionship  in  itself  constitutes  a grave  dan- 
ger. Such  a girl  living  in  a rented  room  is  usu- 
ally without  any  place  in  which  to  properly 


90 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


receive  callers.  An  investigation  was  recently 
made  in  Kansas  City  of  411  lodging-houses  in 
which  young  girls  were  living;  less  than  30  per 
cent,  were  found  with  a parlor  in  which  guests 
might  be  received.  Many  girls  quite  innocently 
permit  young  men  to  call  upon  them  in  their  bed- 
rooms, pitifully  disguised  as  “sitting-rooms,” 
but  the  danger  is  obvious,  and  the  standards  of 
the  girl  gradually  become  lowered. 

Certainly  during  the  trying  times  when  a girl 
is  out  of  work  she  should  have  much  more 
intelligent  help  than  is  at  present  extended  to 
her;  she  should  be  able  to  avail  herself  of  the 
state  employment  agencies  much  more  than  is 
now  possible,  and  the  work  of  the  newly  estab- 
lished vocational  bureaus  should  be  enormouslj'’ 
extended. 

When  once  we  are  in  earnest  about  the  abolition 
of  the  social  evil,  society  will  find  that  it  must 
study  industry  from  the  point  of  ^^ew  of  the  pro- 
ducer in  a sense  which  has  never  been  done  before. 
Such  a study  with  reference  to  industrial  legisla- 
tion will  ally  itself  on  one  hand  with  the  trades- 
union  movement,  which  insists  upon  a liv- 
ing wage  and  shorter  hours  for  the  workers, 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


91 


and  also  upon  an  opportunity  for  self-direction, 
and  on  the  other  hand  with  the  efficiency  move- 
ment, which  would  refrain  from  over-fatiguing 
an  operator  as  it  would  from  over-speeding  a 
machine.  In  addition  to  legislative  enactment 
and  the  historic  trade-union  effort,  the  feebler 
and  newer  movement  on  the  part  of  the  employers 
is  being  reinforced  by  the  welfare  secretary,  who 
is  not  only  devising  recreational  and  educational 
plans,  but  is  placing  before  the  employer  much 
disturbing  information  upon  the  cost  of  living  in 
relation  to  the  pitiful  wages  of  working  girls. 
Certainly  employers  are  growing  ashamed  to 
use  the  worn-out,  hypocritical  pretence  of  em- 
ploying only  the  girl  “protected  by  home  in- 
fluences” as  a device  for  reducing  wages.  Help 
may  also  come  from  the  consumers,  for  an  in- 
creasing number  of  them,  with  compunctions  in 
regard  to  tempted  young  employees,  are  not  only 
unwilling  to  purchase  from  the  employer  who 
underpays  his  girls  and  thus  to  share  his  guilt, 
but  are  striving  in  divers  ways  to  modif}'  existing 
conditions. 

As  working  women  enter  fresh  fields  of 
labor  which  ever  open  up  anew  as  the  old  fields 


92  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

are  submerged  behind  them,  society  must  endea- 
vor to  speedily  protect  them  by  an  amelioration 
of  the  economic  conditions  which  are  now  so 
unnecessarily  harsh  and  dangerous  to  health 
and  morals.  The  world-wide  movement  for  es- 
tablishing governmental  control  of  industrial 
conditions  is  especially  concerned  for  working 
women.  Fourteen  of  the  European  countries 
prohibit  all  night  work  for  women  and  almost 
every  civilized  country  in  the  world  is  considering 
the  number  of  hours  and  the  character  of  work 
in  which  women  may  be  permitted  to  safely 
engage. 

Although  amelioration  comes  about  so  slowly 
that  many  young  girls  are  sacrificed  each  year 
under  conditions  which  could  so  easily  and 
reasonably  be  changed,  nevertheless  it  is  appar- 
ently better  to  overcome  the  dangers  in  this 
new  and  freer  life,  which  modern  industry  has 
opened  to  women,  than  it  is  to  attempt  to  retreat 
into  the  domestic  industry  of  the  past;  for  all 
statistics  of  prostitution  give  the  largest  number 
of  recruits  for  this  life  as  coming  from  domestic 
service  and  the  second  largest  number  from  girls 
who  live  at  home  with  no  definite  occupation 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


93 


whatever.  Therefore,  although  in  the  economic  as- 
pect of  the  social  evil  more  than  in  any  other,  do 
we  find  ground  for  despair,  at  the  same  time  we 
discern,  as  nowhere  else,  the  young  girl’s  stub- 
born power  of  resistance.  Nevertheless,  the 
most  superficial  survey  of  her  surroundings 
shows  the  necessity  for  ameliorating,  as  rapidly 
as  possible,  the  harsh  economic  conditions  which 
now  environ  her. 

That  steadily  increasing  function  of  the  state 
by  which  it  seeks  to  protect  its  workers  from 
their  own  weakness  and  degradation,  and  insists 
that  the  fivelihood  of  the  manual  laborer  shall 
not  be  beaten  down  below  the  level  of  efficient 
citizenship,  assumes  new  forms  almost  daily. 
From  the  human  as  well  as  the  economic  stand- 
point there  is  an  obligation  resting  upon  the 
state  to  discover  how  many  victims  of  the  white 
slave  traffic  are  the  result  of  social  neglect, 
remedial  incapacity,  and  the  lack  of  industrial 
safeguards,  and  how  far  discontinuous  employ- 
ment and  non-employment  are  factors  in  the 
breeding  of  discouragement  and  despair. 

Is  it  because  our  modern  industrialism  is  so 
new  that  we  have  been  slow  to  connect  it  with  the 


94 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE 


poverty  and  vice  all  about  us?  The  socialists 
talk  constantly  of  the  relation  of  economic  law 
to  destitution  and  point  out  the  connection  be- 
tween industrial  maladjustment  and  individual 
wrongdoing,  but  certainly  the  study  of  social 
conditions,  the  obligation  to  eradicate  vice,  can- 
not belong  to  one  pohtical  party  or  to  one  eco- 
nomic school.  It  must  be  recognized  as  a solemn 
obligation  of  existing  governments,  and  society 
must  realize  that  economic  conditions  can  only 
be  made  more  righteous  and  more  human  by 
the  unceasing  devotion  of  generations  of  men. 


MORAL  EDUCATION 
AND  LEGAL  PROTECTION 
OF  CHILDREN 


V'l 


CHAPTER  IV 


MORAL  EDUCATION  AND  LEGAL 
PROTECTION  OF  CHILDREN 

No  great  wrong  has  ever  arisen  more  clearly 
to  the  social  consciousness  of  a generation  than 
has  that  of  commercialized  vice  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  ours,  and  that  we  are  so  slow  to  act  is 
simply  another  evidence  that  human  nature  has 
a curious  power  of  callous  indifference  towards 
evils  which  have  been  so  entrenched  that  they 
seem  part  of  that  which  has  always  been. 
Educators  of  course  share  this  attitude;  at 
moments  they  seem  to  intensify  it,  although  at 
last  an  educational  movement  in  the  direction 
of  sex  hygiene  is  beginning  in  the  schools  and 
colleges.  Primary  schools  strive  to  satisfy  the 
child’s  first  questionings  regarding  the  beginnings 
of  human  life  and  approach  the  subject  through 
simple  biological  instruction  which  at  least 
places  this  knowledge  on  a par  with  other  natural 
facts.  Such  teaching  is  an  enormous  advance 


98  'A  NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

for  the  children  whose  curiosity  would  otherwise 
have  been  satisfied  from  poisonous  sources  and 
who  would  have  learned  of  simple  physiological 
matters  from  such  secret  undercurrents  of  cor- 
rupt knowledge  as  to  have  forever  perverted 
their  minds.  Yet  this  first  direct  step  towards 
an  adequate  educational  approach  to  this  sub- 
ject has  been  surprisingly  difficult  owing  to  the 
self-consciousness  of  grown-up  people;  for  while 
the  children  receive  the  teaching  quite  simply, 
their  parents  often  take  alarm.  Doubtless  co- 
operation with  parents  will  be  necessary  before 
the  subject  can  fall  into  its  proper  place  in  the 
schools.  In  Chicago,  the  largest  women’s  club 
in  the  city  has  established  normal  courses  in 
sex  hygiene  attended  both  by  teachers  and 
mothers,  the  National  and  State  Federations  of 
Women’s  Clubs  are  gradually  preparing  thou- 
sands of  women  throughout  America  for  fuller 
co-operation  with  the  schools  in  this  difl&cult 
matter.  In  this,  as  in  so  many  other  educational 
movements,  Germanj'^  has  led  the  way.  Two 
publications  are  issued  monthly  in  Berlin,  which 
promote  not  only  more  effective  legislation  but 
more  adequate  instruction  in  the  schools  on  this 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


iJ9 

basic  subject.  These  journals  are  supported 
by  men  and  women  anxious  for  light  for  the 
sake  of  their  children.  Some  of  them  were  first 
stirred  to  action  by  Wedekind’s  powerful  drama 
“The  Awakening  of  Spring,”  which,  with  Teu- 
tonic grimness,  thrusts  over  the  footlights  the 
lesson  that  death  and  degradation  may  be  the 
fate  of  a group  of  gifted  school-children,  because 
of  the  cowardly  reticence  of  their  parents. 

A year  ago  the  Bishop  of  London  gathered 
together  a number  of  influential  people  and 
laid  before  them  his  convictions  that  the  root 
of  the  social  evil  lay  in  so-called  “parental 
modesty,”  and  that  in  the  quickening  of  the 
parental  conscience  lay  the  hope  for  the  “lifting 
up  of  England’s  moral  tone  which  has  for  so  long 
been  the  despair  of  England’s  foremost  men.” 

In  America  the  eighth  year-book  of  the  National 
Society  for  the  Scientific  Study  of  Education 
treats  of  this  important  subject  with  great 
ability,  massing  the  agencies  and  methods  in 
impressive  array.  Many  other  educational  jour- 
nals and  organized  societies  could  be  cited  as 
expressing  a new  conscience  in  regard  to  this 
world-old  evil.  The  expert  educational  opinion 


TOO 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


which  they  represent  is  practically  agreed  that 
for  older  children  the  instruction  should  not  be 
confined  to  biology  and  hygiene,  but  may  come 
quite  naturally  in  history  and  literature,  which 
record  and  portray  the  havoc  wrought  by  the 
sexual  instinct  when  uncontrolled,  and  also 
show  that,  when  directed  and  spiritualized,  it 
has  become  an  inspiration  to  the  loftiest  devo- 
tions and  sacrifices.  The  youth  thus  taught 
sees  this  primal  instinct  not  only  as  an  essential 
to  the  continuance  of  the  race,  but  also,  when 
it  is  transmuted  to  the  highest  ends,  as  a funda- 
mental factor  in  social  progress.  The  entire 
subject  is  broadened  out  in  his  mind  as  he  learns 
that  his  own  struggle  is  a common  experience. 
He  is  able  to  make  his  own  interpretations  and 
to  combat  the  crude  inferences  of  his  patronizing 
companions.  After  all,  no  young  person  will  be 
able  to  control  his  impulses  and  to  save  himself 
from  the  grosser  temptations,  unless  he  has  been 
put  under  the  sway  of  nobler  influences.  Per- 
haps we  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  inhibitions  of 
character  as  well  as  its  reinforcements  come  most 
readily  through  idealistic  motives. 

Certainly  all  the  great  religions  of  the  world 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


101 


have  recognized  youth’s  need  of  spiritual  help 
during  the  trying  years  of  adolescence.  The 
ceremonies  of  the  earliest  religions  deal  with  this 
instinct  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  others,  and  all 
later  religions  attempt  to  provide  the  youth  with 
shadowy  weapons  for  the  struggle  which  lies 
ahead  of  him,  for  the  wise  men  in  every  age  have 
known  that  only  the  power  of  the  spirit  can 
overcome  the  lusts  of  the  flesh.  In  spite  of  this 
educational  advance,  courses  of  study  in  many 
public  and  private  schools  are  still  prepared 
exactly  as  if  educators  had  never  known  that  at 
fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age,  the  will  power 
being  still  weak,  the  bodily  desires  are  keen  and 
insistent.  The  head  master  of  Eton,  Mr.  Lyt- 
tleton,  who  has  given  much  thought  to  this 
gap  in  the  education  of  youth  says,  “The  certain 
result  of  leaving  an  enormous  majority  of  boys 
unguided  and  uninstructed  in  a matter  where 
their  strongest  passions  are  concerned,  is  that  they 
grow  up  to  judge  of  all  questions  connected  with 
it,  from  a purely  selfish  point  of  view.”  He  con- 
tends that  this  selfishness  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
any  single  suggestion  or  hint  which  boys  receive 
on  the  subject  comes  from  other  boys  or  young 


102 


A KEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


men  who  are  under  the  same  potent  influences  of 
ignorance,  curiosity  and  the  claims  of  self.  No 
wholesome  counter-balance  of  knowledge  is  given, 
no  attempt  is  made  to  invest  the  subject  with 
dignity  or  to  place  it  in  relation  to  the  welfare 
of  others  and  to  universal  law’.  Mr.  Lyttleton 
contends  that  this  alone  can  explain  the  pecul- 
iarly brutal  attitude  towards  “outcast”  women 
which  is  a sustained  cruelty  to  be  discerned  in 
no  other  relation  of  English  life.  To  quote  him 
again:  “But  when  the  victims  of  man’s  cruelty 
are  not  birds  or  beasts  but  our  own  country- 
women, doomed  by  the  hundred  thousand  to  a 
life  of  unutterable  shame  and  hopeless  misery, 
then  and  then  only  the  general  average  tone  of 
young  men  becomes  hard  and  brutally  callous  or 
frivolous  with  a kind  of  coarse  frivolity  not  ex- 
hibited in  relation  to  any  other  form  of  human 
suffering.”  At  the  present  moment  thousands  of 
young  people  in  our  great  cities  possess  no  other 
knowledge  of  this  grave  social  evil  which  may  at 
any  moment  become  a dangerous  personal  men- 
ace, save  what  is  imparted  to  them  in  this 
brutal  flippant  spirit.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
child  growing  up  in  the  midst  of  civilization 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


103 


receives  from  its  parents  and  teachers  something 
of  the  accumulated  experience  of  the  world  on 
all  other  subjects  save  upon  that  of  sex.  On  this 
one  subject  alone  each  generation  learns  little 
from  its  predecessors. 

An  educator  has  lately  pointed  out  that  it  is 
an  old  lure  of  vice  to  pretend  that  it  alone  deals 
with  manliness  and  reality,  and  he  complains 
that  it  is  always  difficult  to  convince  youth  that 
the  higher  planes  of  life  contain  anything  but 
chilly  sentiments.  He  contends  that  young  peo- 
ple are  therefore  prone  to  receive  moralizing 
and  admonitions  with  polite  attention,  but  when 
it  comes  to  action,  they  carefully  observe  the  life 
about  them  in  order  to  conduct  themselves  in  such 
wise  as  to  be  part  of  the  really  desirable  world 
inhabited  by  men  of  affairs.  Owing  to  this 
attitude,  many  young  people  living  in  our  cities 
at  the  present  moment  have  failed  to  appre- 
hend the  admonitions  of  religion  and  have  never 
responded  to  its  inner  control.  It  is  as  if  the 
impact  of  the  world  had  stunned  their  spiritual 
natures,  and  as  if  this  had  occurred  at  the  very 
time  that  a most  dangerous  experiment  is  being 
tried.  The  public  gaieties  formerly  allowed  in 


104  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

Catholic  countries  where  young  people  were 
restrained  by  the  confessional,  are  now  permitted 
in  cities  where  this  restraint  is  altogether  un- 
known to  thousands  of  young  people,  and  only 
faintly  and  traditionally  operative  upon  thou- 
sands of  others.  The  puritanical  history  of 
American  cities  assumes  that  these  gaieties  are 
forbidden,  and  that  the  streets  are  sober  and 
decorous  for  conscientious  young  men  and  women 
who  need  no  external  protection.  This  un- 
grounded assumption,  united  to  the  fact  that  no 
adult  has  the  confidence  of  these  young  people, 
who  are  constantly  subjected  to  a multitude  of 
imaginative  impressions,  is  almost  certain  to 
result  disastrously. 

The  social  relationships  in  a modem  city  are 
so  hastily  made  and  often  so  superficial,  that  the 
old  human  restraints  of  public  opinion,  long  sus- 
tained in  smaller  communities,  have  also  broken 
down.  Thousands  of  young  men  and  women  in 
every  great  city  have  received  none  of  the  lessons 
in  self-control  which  even  savage  tribes  imparted 
to  their  children  when  they  taught  them  to  master 
their  appetites  as  well  as  their  emotions.  These 
young  people  are  perhaps  further  from  all  com- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


105 


munity  restraint  and  genuine  social  control  than 
the  youth  of  the  community  have  ever  been  in 
the  long  history  of  civilization.  Certainly  only 
the  modern  city  has  offered  at  one  and  the  same 
time  every  possible  stimulation  for  the  lower 
nature  and  every  opportunity  for  secret  vice. 
Educators  apparently  forget  that  this  unre- 
strained stimulation  of  young  people,  so  charac- 
teristic of  our  cities,  although  developing  very 
rapidly,  is  of  recent  origin,  and  that  we  have  not 
yet  seen  the  outv.ome.  The  present  education  of 
the  average  young  man  has  given  him  only  the 
most  unreal  protection  against  the  tempta- 
tions of  the  city.  Schoolboys  are  subjected  to 
many  lures  from  without  just  at  the  moment 
when  they  are  filled  with  an  inner  tumult  which 
utterly  bewilders  them  and  concerning  which 
no  one  has  instructed  them  save  in  terms  of 
empty  precept  and  unintelligible  warning. 

We  are  authoritatively  told  that  the  physical 
difficulties  are  enormously  increased  by  uncon- 
trolled or  perverted  imaginations,  and  all  sound 
advice  to  young  men  in  regard  to  this  subject 
emphasizes  a clean  mind,  exhorts  an  imagination 
kept  free  from  sensuality  and  insists  upon  days 


106 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


filled  with  wholesome  athletic  interests.  We 
allow  this  regime  to  be  exactly  reversed  for  thou- 
sands of  young  people  living  in  the  most  crowded 
and  most  unwholesome  parts  of  the  city.  Not 
only  does  the  stage  in  its  advertisements  exhibit 
all  the  allurements  of  sex  to  such  an  extent  that 
a play  without  a “love  interest”  is  considered 
foredoomed  to  failure,  but  the  novels  which  form 
the  sole  reading  of  thousands  of  young  men  and 
girls  deal  only  with  the  course  of  true  or  simulated 
love,  resulting  in  a rose-colored  marriage,  or  in 
variegated  misfortunes. 

Often  the  only  recreation  possible  for  young  . 
men  and  young  women  together  is  dancing,  in 
which  it  is  always  easy  to  transgress  the  pro- 
prieties. In  many  public  dance  halls,  however, 
improprieties  are  deliberately  fostered.  The 
waltzes  and  two-steps  are  purposely  slow,  the 
couples  leaning  heavily  on  each  other  barely 
move  across  the  floor,  all  the  jollity  and  bracing 
exercise  of  the  peasant  dance  is  eliminated,  as  is 
all  the  careful  decorum  of  the  formal  dance. 
The  efforts  to  obtain  pleasure  or  to  feed  the  imagi- 
nation are  thus  converged  upon  the  senses  which 
it  is_ already  difficult  for  young  people  to  under- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


107 


stand  and  to  control.  It  is  therefore  not  remark- 
able that  in  certain  parts  of  the  city  groups  of 
idle  young  men  are  found  whose  evil  imagina- 
tions have  actually  inhibited  their  power  for 
normal  living.  On  the  streets  or  in  the  pool- 
rooms  where  they  congregate  their  conversa- 
tion, their  tales  of  adventure,  their  remarks  upon 
women  who  pass  by,  all  reveal  that  they  have  been 
caught  in  the  toils  of  an  instinct  so  powerful  and 
primal  that  when  left  without  direction  it  can 
easily  overwhelm  its  possessor  and  swamp  his 
faculties.  These  young  men,  who  do  no  regular 
work,  who  expect  to  be  supported  by  their 
mothers  and  sisters  and  to  get  money  for  the 
shows  and  theatres  by  any  sort  of  disreputable 
undertaking,  are  in  excellent  training  for  the  life 
of  the  procurer,  and  it  is  from  such  groups  that 
they  are  recruited.  There  is  almost  a system 
of  apprenticeship,  for  boys  when  very  small  act 
as  “look-outs”  and  are  later  utilized  to  make 
acquaintances  with  girls  in  order  to  introduce 
them  to  professionals.  From  this  they  gradually 
learn  the  method  of  procuring  girls  and  at  last 
do  an  independent  business.  If  one  boy  is  suc- 
cessful in  such  a life,  throughout  his  acquaintance 


108  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

runs  the  rumor  that  a girl  is  an  asset  that  will 
bring  a larger  return  than  can  possibly  be  earned 
in  hard-working  ways.  Could  the  imaginations 
of  these  young  men  have  been  controlled  and 
cultivated,  could  the  desire  for  adventure  have 
been  directed  into  wholesome  channels,  could 
these  idle  boys  have  been  taught  that,  so  far  from 
being  manly  they  were  losing  all  virility,  could 
higher  interests  have  been  aroused  and  standards 
given  them  in  relation  to  this  one  aspect  of  hfe, 
the  entire  situation  of  commercialized  vice  would 
be  a different  thing. 

The  girls  with  a desire  for  adventure  seem  con- 
fined to  this  one  dubious  outlet  even  more  than 
the  boys,  although  there  are  only  one-eighth  as 
many  delinquent  girls  as  boys  brought  into  the 
juvenile  court  in  Chicago,  the  charge  against 
the  girls  in  almost  every  instance  involves  a loss 
of  chastity.  One  of  them  who  was  vainly  en- 
deavoring to  formulate  the  causes  of  her  downfall, 
concentrated  them  all  in  the  single  statement 
that  she  wanted  the  other  girls  to  know  that  she 
too  was  a “good  Indian.”  Such  a girl,  while 
she  is  not  an  actual  member  of  a gang  of  boys, 
is  often  attached  to  one  by  so  many  loyalties  and 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


109 


friendships  that  she  will  seldom  testify  against 
a member,  even  when  she  has  been  injured  by 
him.  She  also  depends  upon  the  gang  when  she 
requires  bail  in  the  police  court  or  the  protection 
that  comes  from  political  influence,  and  she  is 
often  very  proud  of  her  quasi-membership.  The 
little  girls  brought  into  the  juvenile  court  are 
usually  daughters  of  those  poorest  immigrant  fam- 
ilies living  in  the  worst  type  of  city  tenements, 
who  are  frequently  forced  to  take  boarders  in 
order  to  pay  the  rent.  A surprising  number  of 
little  girls  have  first  become  involved  in  wrong- 
doing through  the  men  of  their  own  households. 
A recent  inquiry  among  130  girls  living  in  a sor- 
did red  light  district  disclosed  the  fact  that  a 
majority  of  them  had  thus  been  victimized  and 
the  wrong  had  come  to  them  so  early  that 
they  had  been  despoiled  at  an  average  age  of 
eight  years.  Looking  upon  the  forlorn  little  crea- 
tures, who  are  often  brought  into  the  Chicago 
juvenile  court  to  testify  against  their  own  rela- 
tives, one  is  seized  with  that  curious  compunc- 
tion Goethe  expressed  in  the  now  hackneyed 
line  from  “Mignon:” 

“ Was  hat  Man  dir,  du  armes  Kind,  gethan?  ” 


110  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

One  is  also  inclined  to  reproach  educators  for 
neglecting  to  give  children  instruction  in  play 
when  one  sees  the  unregulated  amusement  parks 
which  are  apparently  so  dangerous  to  little  girls 
twelve  or  fourteen  years  old.  Because  they 
are  childishly  eager  for  amusement  and  totally 
unable  to  pay  for  a ride  on  the  scenic  railway 
or  for  a ticket  to  an  entertainment,  these 
disappointed  children  easily  accept  many  favors 
from  the  young  men  who  are  standing  near  the 
entrances  for  the  express  purpose  of  ruining  them. 
The  hideous  reward  which  is  demanded  from 
them  later  in  the  evening,  after  they  have  enjoyed 
the  many  “treats”  which  the  amusement  park 
offers,  apparently  seems  of  little  moment.  Their 
childish  minds  are  filled  with  the  memory  of  the 
lurid  pleasures  to  the  oblivion  of  the  later  expe- 
rience, and  they  eagerly  tell  their  companions  of 
this  possibility  “of  getting  in  to  all  the  shows.” 
These  poor  little  girls  pass  uiuioticed  amidst  a 
crowd  of  honest  people  seeking  recreation  after  a 
long  day’s  work,  groups  of  older  girls  walking  and 
talking  gaily  with  young  men  of  their  acquaint- 
ance, and  happy  children  holding  their  parents’ 
hands.  This  cruel  exploitation  of  the  childish 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


111 


eagerness  for  pleasure  is,  of  course,  possible  only 
among  a certain  type  of  forlorn  city  children  who 
are  totally  without  standards  and  into  whose 
colorless  lives  a visit  to  the  amusement  park 
brings  the  acme  of  delirious  excitement.  It  is 
possible  that  these  children  are  the  inevitable 
product  of  city  life ; in  Paris,  little  girls  at  local 
fetes  wishing  to  ride  on  the  hobby  horse  fre- 
quently buy  the  privilege  at  a fearful  price  from 
the  man  directing  the  machinery,  and  a physician 
connected  with  the  New  York  Society  for  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children  writes:  “It 
is  horribly  pathetic  to  learn  how  far  a nickel  or  a 
quarter  wall  go  towards  purchasing  the  virtue  of 
these  children.  ” 

The  home  environment  of  such  children  has 
been  similar  to  that  of  many  others  who  come  to 
grief  through  the  five  - cent  theatres.  These 
eager  little  people,  to  whom  life  has  offered  few 
pleasures,  crowd  around  the  door  hoping  to  be 
taken  in  by  some  kind  soul  and,  when  they  have 
been  disappointed  over  and  over  again  and  the 
last  performance  is  about  to  begin,  a little  girl 
may  be  induced  unthinkingly  to  barter  her  chas- 
tity for  an  entrance  fee. 


112 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Many  children  are  also  found  who  have  been 
decoyed  into  their  first  wrong-doing  through  the 
temptation  of  the  saloon,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
one  of  the  earliest  regulations  in  American  cities 
for  the  protection  of  children  was  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  sale  of  liquor  to  minors.  That 
children  may  be  easily  demoralized  by  the 
influence  of  a disorderly  saloon  was  demonstrated 
recently  in  Chicago;  one  of  these  saloons  was  so 
situtated  that  the  pupils  of  a public  school  were 
obliged  to  pass  it  and  from  the  windows  of  the 
schoolhouse  itself  could  see  much  of  what  was 
passing  within  the  place.  An  effort  was  made  by 
the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  to  have  it 
closed  by  the  chief  of  police,  but  although  he 
did  so,  it  was  opened  again  the  folloTving  day. 
The  Association  then  took  up  the  matter  with 
the  mayor,  who  refused  to  interfere,  insisting 
that  the  objectionable  features  had  been  elimi- 
nated. Through  months  of  effort,  during  which 
time  the  practices  of  the  place  remained  quite 
unchanged,  one  group  after  another  of  public- 
spirited  citizens  endeavored  to  suppress  what 
had  become  a public  scandal,  only  to  find  that 
the  place  was  protected  by  brewery  interests 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


113 


which  were  more  powerful,  both  financially  and 
politically,  than  themselves.  At  last,  after  a 
peculiarly  flagrant  case  involving  a little  girl, 
the  mothers  of  the  neighborhood  arranged  a 
mass  meeting  in  the  schoolhouse  itself,  inviting 
local  officials  to  be  present.  The  mothers  then 
produced  a mass  of  testimony  which  demon- 
strated that  dozens  and  hundreds  of  children 
had  been  directly  or  indirectly  affected  by  the 
place  whose  removal  they  demanded.  A meet- 
ing so  full  of  genuine  anxiety  and  righteous  indig- 
nation could  not  well  be  disregarded,  and  the 
compulsory  education  department  was  at  last 
able  to  obtain  a revocation  of  the  license.  The 
many  people  who  had  so  long  tried  to  do  away 
with  this  avowedly  disreputable  saloon  received 
a fresh  impression  of  the  menace  to  children 
who  became  sophisticated  by  daily  familiarity 
with  vice.  Yet  many  mothers,  hard  pressed  by 
poverty,  are  obliged  to  rent  houses  next  to  vicious 
neighborhoods  and  their  children  very  early 
become  familiar  with  all  the  outer  aspects  of 
vice.  Among  them  are  the  children  of  widows 
who  make  friends  with  their  dubious  neigh- 
bors during  the  long  days  while  their  mothers 


114  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

are  at  work.  I recall  two  sisters  in  one 
family  whose  mother  had  moved  her  household 
to  the  borders  of  a Chicago  segregated  district, 
apparently  without  knowing  the  character  of 
the  neighborhood.  The  little  sisters,  twelve  and 
eight  years  old,  accepted  many  invitations  from 
a kind  neighbor  to  come  into  her  house  to  see 
her  pretty  things.  The  older  girl  was  delighted 
to  be  “made  up”  with  powder  and  paint  and  to 
try  on  long  dresses,  while  the  little  one  who  sang 
very  prettily  was  taught  some  new  songs,  happily 
without  understanding  their  import.  The  tired 
mother  knew  nothing  of  what  the  children  did 
during  her  absence,  until  an  honest  neighbor  who 
had  seen  the  little  girls  going  in  and  out  of  the 
district,  interfered  on  their  behalf.  The  fright- 
ened mother  moved  back  to  her  old  neighborhood 
which  she  had  left  in  search  of  cheaper  rent,  her 
pious  soul  stirred  to  its  depths  that  the  children 
for  whom  she  patiently  worked  day  by  day  had 
so  narrowly  escaped  destruction. 

AVho  cannot  recall  at  least  one  of  these  des- 
perate mothers,  overworked  and  harried  through 
a long  day,  prolonged  bj^  the  famil}^  washing  and 
cooking  into  the  evening,  followed  by  a night  of 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


115 


foreboding  and  misgiving  because  the  very 
children  for  whom  her  life  is  sacrificed  are  slowly 
slipping  away  from  her  control  and  aflfection? 
Such  a spectacle  forces  one  into  an  agreement 
with  Wells,  that  it  is  a “monstrous  absurdity” 
that  women  who  are  “discharging  their  supreme 
social  function,  that  of  rearing  children,  should 
do  it  in  their  spare  time,  as  it  were,  while  they 
‘earn  their  living’  by  contributing  some  half- 
mechanical element  to  some  trivial  industrial 
product.”  Nevertheless,  such  a woman  whose 
wages  are  fixed  on  the  basis  of  individual  subsist- 
ence, who  is  quite  unable  to  earn  a family  wage, 
is  still  held  by  a legal  obligation  to  support  her 
children  with  the  desperate  penalty  of  forfeiture 
if  she  fail. 

I can  recall  a very  intelligent  woman  who  long 
brought  her  children  to  the  Hull  House  day 
nursery  with  this  result  at  the  end  of  ten  years 
of  devotion:  the  little  girl  is  almost  totally 
deaf  owing  to  neglect  following  a case  of  measles, 
because  her  mother  could  not  stop  work  in  order 
to  care  for  her;  the  youngest  boy  has  lost  a leg 
flipping  cars;  the  oldest  boy  has  twice  been 
arrested  for  petty  larceny;  the  twin  boys,  in 


116  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

spite  of  prolonged  sojourns  in  the  parental  school, 
have  been  such  habitual  truants  that  their 
natural  intelligence  has  secured  little  aid  from 
education.  Of  the  five  children  three  are  now 
in  semi-penal  institutions,  supported  by  the 
state.  It  would  not  therefore  have  been  so  un- 
economical to  have  boarded  them  with  their 
own  mother,  requiring  a standard  of  nutrition 
and  school  attendance  at  least  up  to  that  national 
standard  of  nurture  which  the  more  advanced 
European  governments  are  establishing. 

The  recent  Illinois  law,  providing  that  the 
children  of  widows  may  be  supported  by  public 
funds  paid  to  the  mother  upon  order  of  the  juvenile 
court,  will  eventually  restore  a mother’s  care  to 
these  poor  children;  but  in  the  meantime,  even 
the  poor  mother  who  is  receiving  such  aid,  in  her 
forced  search  for  cheap  rent  may  be  continually  led 
nearer  to  the  notoriously  evil  districts.  Many 
appeals  made  to  landlords  of  disreputable  houses 
in  Chicago  on  behalf  of  the  children  living  adja- 
cent to  such  property  have  never  secured  a 
favorable  response.  It  is  apparently  difficult 
for  the  average  property  owner  to  resist  the  high 
rents  which  houses  in  certain  districts  of  the 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


117 


city  can  command  if  rented  for  purposes  of  vice. 
I recall  two  small  frame  houses  identical  in 
type  and  value  standing  side  by  side.  One 
which  belonged  to  a citizen  without  scruples  was 
rented  for  $30.00  a month,  the  other  belonging  to 
a conscientious  man  was  rented  for  $9.00  a month. 
The  supposedly  respectable  landlords  defend 
themselves  behind  the  old  sophistry:  “If  I did 
not  rent  my  house  for  such  a purpose,  someone 
else  would,”  and  the  more  hardened  ones  say 
that  “It  is  all  in  the  line  of  business.”  Both  of 
them  are  enormously  helped  by  the  secrecy  sur- 
rounding the  ownership  of  such  houses,  although 
it  is  hoped  that  the  laws  requiring  the  name  of 
the  owner  and  the  agent  of  every  multiple  house 
to  be  posted  in  the  public  hallway  will  at  length 
break  through  this  protection,  and  the  discovered 
landlords  will  then  be  obliged  to  pay  the  fine  to 
which  the  law  specifically  states  they  have  made 
themselves  liable.  In  the  meantime,  women 
forced  to  find  cheap  rents  are  subjected  to  one 
more  handicap  in  addition  to  the  many  others 
poverty  places  upon  them.  Such  experiences 
may  explain  the  fact  that  English  figures  show 
a very  large  proportion  of  widows  and  deserted 


118  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

women  among  the  prostitutes  in  those  large 
towns  which  maintain  segregated  districts. 

The  deprivation  of  a mother’s  care  is  most 
frequently  experienced  by  the  children  of  the 
poorest  colored  families  who  are  often  forced  to 
live  in  disreputable  neighborhoods  because  they 
literally  cannot  rent  houses  anyAvhere  else. 
Both  because  rents  are  always  high  for  colored 
people  and  because  the  colored  mothers  are 
obliged  to  support  their  children,  seven  times 
as  many  of  them,  in  proportion  to  their  entire 
number,  as  of  the  Avhite  mothers,  the  actual 
number  of  colored  children  neglected  in  the  midst 
of  temptation  is  abnormally  large.  So  closely 
is  child  life  founded  upon  the  imitation  of  what 
it  sees  that  the  child  who  knows  all  evil  is  almost 
sure  in  the  end  to  share  it.  Colored  children 
seldom  roam  far  from  their  owm  neighborhoods: 
in  the  public  playgrounds,  which  are  theoretically 
open  to  them,  they  are  made  so  uncomfortable 
by  the  slights  of  other  children  that  they  learn 
to  stay  away,  and,  shut  out  from  legitimate  rec- 
reation, are  all  the  more  tempted  by  the  careless, 
luxurious  life  of  a vicious  neighborhood.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  colored  girls  who  have  thus  from 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


119 


childhood  grown  familiar  with  the  outer  aspects 
of  vice,  are  others  who  are  sent  into  the  district 
in  the  capacity  of  domestic  servants  by  unscru- 
pulous employment  agencies  who  would  not 
venture  to  thus  treat  a white  girl.  The  com- 
munity forces  the  very  people  who  have  con- 
fessedly the  shortest  history  of  social  restraint, 
into  a dangerous  proximity  with  the  vice  districts 
of  the  city.  This  results,  as  might  easily  be 
predicted,  in  a very  large  number  of  colored 
girls  entering  a disreputable  life.  The  negroes 
themselves  believe  that  the  basic  cause  for  the 
high  percentage  of  colored  prostitutes  is  the  recent 
enslavement  of  their  race  with  its  attendant 
unstable  marriage  and  parental  status,  and  point 
to  thousands  of  slave  sales  that  but  two  genera- 
tions ago  disrupted  the  negroes’  attempts  at 
family  life.  Knowing  this  as  we  do,  it  seems  all 
the  more  unjustifiable  that  the  nation  which  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  broken  foundations  of  this  family 
life  should  carelessly  permit  the  negroes,  making 
their  first  struggle  towards  a higher  standard  of 
domesticity,  to  be  subjected  to  the  most  flagrant 
temptations  which  our  civilization  tolerates. 

The  imaginations  of  even  very  young  children 


120  NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

may  easily  be  forced  into  sensual  channels. 
A little  girl,  twelve  years  old,  was  one  day 
brought  to  the  psychopathic  clinic  connected 
with  the  Chicago  juvenile  court.  She  had  been 
detained  under  police  surveillance  for  more  than 
a week,  while  baffled  detectives  had  in  vain  tried 
to  verify  the  statements  she  had  made  to  her 
Sunday-school  teacher  in  great  detail  of  certain 
horrible  experiences  which  had  befallen  her. 
For  at  least  a week  no  one  concerned  had  the 
remotest  idea  that  the  child  was  fabricating. 
The  police  thought  that  she  had  merely  grown 
confused  as  to  the  places  to  which  she  had  been 
“carried  imconscious.”  The  mother  gave  the 
first  clue  when  she  insisted  that  the  child  had 
never  been  away  from  her  long  enough  to  have 
had  these  experiences,  but  came  directly  home 
from  school  every  afternoon  for  her  tea,  of  which 
she  habitually  drank  ten  or  twelve  cups.  The 
skilful  questionings  at  the  clinic,  while  clearly 
establishing  the  fact  of  a disordered  mind,  dis- 
closed an  astonishing  knowledge  of  the  habits  of 
the  underworld. 

Even  children  who  live  in  respectable  neigh- 
borhoods and  are  guarded  by  careful  parents  so 


'AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


121 


that  their  imaginations  are  not  perverted,  but 
only  starved,  constantly  conduct  a search  for 
the  magical  and  impossible  which  leads  them 
into  moral  dangers.  An  astonishing  number  of 
them  consult  palmists,  soothsayers,  and  fortune 
tellers.  These  dealers  in  futurity,  who  sell  only 
love  and  riches,  the  latter  often  dependent  upon 
the  first,  are  sometimes  in  collusion  with  dis- 
reputable houses,  and  at  the  best  make  the  path 
of  normal  living  more  difficult  for  their  eager 
young  patrons.  There  is  something  very  pathetic 
in  the  sheepish,  yet  radiant,  faces  of  the  boy 
and  girl,  often  together,  who  come  out  on  the 
street  from  a dingy  doorway  which  bears  the 
palmist’s  sign  of  the  spread-out  hand.  This 
remnant  of  primitive  magic  is  all  they  can  find 
with  which  to  feed  their  eager  imaginations, 
although  the  city  offers  libraries  and  galleries, 
crowned  with  man’s  later  imaginative  achieve- 
ments. One  hard-working  girl  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, told  by  a palmist  that  “diamonds  were 
coming  to  her  soon,”  afterwards  accepted  with- 
out a moment’s  hesitation  a so-called  diamond 
ring  from  a man  whose  improper  attentions  she 
had  hitherto  withstood. 


122 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


In  addition  to  these  heedless  young  people, 
pulled  into  a sordid  and  vicious  life  through 
their  very  search  for  romance,  are  many  little 
children  ensnared  by  means  of  the  most  innocent 
playthings  and  pleasures  of  childhood.  Perhaps 
one  of  the  saddest  aspects  of  the  social  evil  as  it 
exists  to-day  in  the  modern  city,  is  the  procuring 
of  little  girls  who  are  too  young  to  have  received 
adequate  instruction  of  any  sort  and  whose 
natural  safeguard  of  modesty  and  reserve  has 
been  broken  down  by  the  overcrowding  of  tene- 
ment house  life.  Any  educator  who  has  made  a 
careful  study  of  the  children  from  the  crowded 
districts  is  impressed  with  the  numbers  of  them 
whose  moral  natures  are  apparently  unawakened. 
While  there  are  comparatively  few  of  these  non- 
moral  children  in  any  one  neighborhood,  in  the 
entire  city  their  number  is  far  from  negligible. 
Such  children  are  used  bj'’  disreputable  people 
to  invite  their  more  normal  plajunates  to  house 
parties,  which  thej'  attend  again  and  again, 
lured  by  candy  and  fruit,  until  they  gradually 
learn  to  trust  the  vicious  hostess.  The  head  of 
one  such  house,  recently  sent  to  the  penitentiary 
upon  charges  brought  against  her  by  the  Juvenile 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


123 


Protective  Association,  founded  her  large  and 
successful  business  upon  the  activities  of  three 
or  four  little  girls  who,  although  they  had  gradu- 
ally come  to  understand  her  purpose,  were  appar- 
ently so  chained  to  her  by  the  goodies  and  favors 
which  they  received,  that  they  were  quite  indif- 
ferent to  the  fate  of  their  little  friends.  Such 
children,  when  brought  to  the  psychopathic  clinic 
attached  to  the  Chicago  juvenile  court,  are 
sometimes  found  to  have  incipient  epilepsy  or 
other  physical  disabilities  from  which  their 
conduct  may  be  at  least  partially  accounted  for. 
Sometimes  they  come  from  respectable  families, 
but  more  often  from  families  where  they  have 
been  mistreated  and  where  dissolute  parents 
have  given  them  neither  affection  nor  protection. 
Many  of  these  children  whose  relatives  have 
obviously  contributed  to  their  delinquency  are 
helped  by  the  enforcement  of  the  adult  delin- 
quency law. 

One  looks  upon  these  hardened  little  people 
with  a sense  of  apology  that  educational  forces 
have  not  been  able  to  break  into  their  first  igno- 
rance of  life  before  it  becomes  toughened  into 
insensibility,  and  one  knows  that,  whatever  may 


124  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

be  done  for  them  later,  because  of  this  early 
neglect,  they  will  probably  always  remain  im- 
pervious to  the  gentler  aspects  of  life,  as  if  vice 
seared  their  tender  minds  with  red-hot  irons. 
Our  public-school  education  is  so  nearly  uni- 
versal, that  if  the  entire  body  of  the  teachers 
seriously  undertook  to  instruct  all  American 
youth  in  regard  to  this  most  important  aspect 
of  life,  why  should  they  not  in  time  train  their 
pupils  to  continence  and  self-direction,  as  they 
already  discipline  their  minds  wuth  knowledge 
in  regard  to  many  other  matters?  Certainly 
the  extreme  youth  of  the  victims  of  the  white 
slave  traffic,  both  boys  and  girls,  places  a great 
responsibility  upon  the  educational  forces  of  the 
community. 

The  state  which  supports  the  public  school  is 
also  coming  to  the  rescue  of  children  through 
protective  legislation.  This  is  another  illustration 
that  the  beginnings  of  social  advance  have  often 
resulted  from  the  efforts  to  defend  the  weakest 
and  least-sheltered  members  of 'the  community. 
The  widespread  movement  which  would  protect 
children  from  premature  labor,  also  prohibits 
them  from  engaging  in  occupations  in  which 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


125 


they  are  subjected  to  moral  dangers.  Several 
American  cities  have  of  late  become  much  con- 
cerned over  the  temptations  to  which  messenger 
boys,  delivery  boys,  and  newsboys  are  constantly 
subjected  when  their  business  takes  them  into 
vicious  districts.  The  Chicago  vice  commission 
makes  a plea  for  these  “children  of  the  night” 
that  they  shall  be  protected  by  law  from  those 
temptations  which  they  are  too  young  and  too 
untrained  to  withstand.  New  York  and  Wis- 
consin are  the  only  states  which  have  raised  the 
legal  age  of  messenger  boys  employed  late  at 
night  to  twenty-one  years.  Under  the  inadequate 
sixteen-year  limit,  which  regulates  night  work 
for  children  in  Illinois,  boys  constantly  come  to 
grief  through  their  familiarity  with  the  social 
evil.  One  of  these,  a delicate  boy  of  seventeen, 
had  been  put  into  the  messenger  service  by  his 
parents  when  their  family  doctor  had  recom- 
mended out-of-door  work.  Because  he  was  well- 
bred  and  good-looking,  he  became  especially 
popular  with  the  inmates  of  disreputable  houses. 
They  gave  him  tips  of  a dollar  and  more  when  he 
returned  from  the  errands  which  he  had  executed 
for  them,  such  as  buying  candy,  cocaine  or 


126 


'A  NE^y  CONSCIENCE  AND 


morphine.  He  was  inevitably  flattered  by  their 
attentions  and  pleased  with  his  own  popularity. 
Although  his  mother  knew  that  his  duties  as  a 
messenger  boy  occasionally  took  him  to  dis- 
reputable houses,  she  fervently  hoped  his  early 
training  might  keep  him  straight,  but  in  the  end 
realized  the  foolhardiness  of  subjecting  an  im- 
mature youth  to  these  temptations.  The  vice 
commission  report  gives  various  detailed  in- 
stances of  similar  experiences  on  the  part  of 
other  lads,  one  of  them  being  a high-school  boy 
who  was  merely  earning  extra  money  as  a messen- 
ger boy  during  the  rush  of  Christmas  week. 

The  regulations  in  Boston,  New  York,  Cin- 
cinnati, Milwaukee  and  St.  Louis  for  the  safe- 
guarding of  these  children  may  be  but  a forecast 
of  the  care  which  the  city  will  at  last  learn  to 
devise  for  youth  under  special  temptations. 
Because  the  various  efforts  made  in  Chicago  to 
obtain  adequate  legislation  for  the  protection 
of  street-trading  children  have  not  succeeded, 
incidents  like  the  following  have  not  only  occurred 
once,  but  are  constantly  repeated:  a pretty  little 
girl,  the  only  child  of  a widowed  mother,  sold 
newspapers  after  school  hours  from  the  time  she 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


127 


was  seven  years  old.  Because  her  home  was 
near  a vicious  neighborhood  and  because  the 
people  in  the  disreputable  hotels  seldom  asked 
for  change  when  they  bought  a paper  and  good- 
naturedly  gave  her  many  little  presents,  her 
mother  permitted  her  to  gain  a clientele  within 
the  district  on  the  ground  that  she  was  too  young 
to  understand  what  she  might  see.  This  con- 
tinued familiarity,  in  spite  of  her  mother’s  ad- 
monitions, not  to  talk  to  her  customers,  inevitably 
resulted  in  so  vitiating  the  standard  of  the  growing 
girl,  that  at  the  age  of  fourteen  she  became  an 
inmate  of  one  of  the  houses.  A similar  instance 
concerns  three  little  girls  who  habitually  sold 
gum  in  one  of  the  segregated  districts.  Because 
they  had  repeatedly  been  turned  away  by  kind- 
hearted  policemen  who  felt  that  they  ought  not 
to  be  in  such  a neighborhood,  each  one  of  these 
children  had  obtained  a special  permit  from  the 
mayor  of  the  city  in  order  to  protect  herself  from 
“police  interference.”  While  the  mayor  had 
no  actual  authority  to  issue  such  permits,  natu- 
rally the  piece  of  paper  bearing  his  name,  when 
displayed  by  a child,  checked  the  activity  of 
the  police  officer.  The  incident  was  but  one  more 


128 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


example  of  the  old  conflict  between  mistaken 
kindness  to  the  individual  child  in  need  of  money, 
and  the  enforcement  of  those  regulations  which 
may  seem  to  work  a temporarj”-  hardship  upon  one 
child,  but  save  a hundred  others  from  entering 
occupations  which  can  only  lead  into  blind  alleys. 
Because  such  occupations  inevitably  result  in 
increasing  the  number  of  unemployables,  the 
educational  system  itself  must  be  challenged. 

A royal  commission  has  recently  recommended 
to  the  English  Parliament  that  “the  legally  per- 
missible hours  for  the  employment  of  boys  be 
shortened,  that  they  be  required  to  spend  the 
hours  so  set  free,  in  physical  and  technological 
training,  that  the  manufacturing  of  the  unem- 
ployable may  cease.”  Certainly  we  are  justified 
in  demanding  from  our  educational  system,  that 
the  interest  and  capacity  of  each  child  leaving 
school  to  enter  industry,  shall  have  been  studied 
with  reference  to  the  type  of  work  he  is  about  to 
undertake.  When  vocational  bureaus  are  prop- 
erly connected  with  all  the  pubhc  schools,  a 
girl  will  have  an  intelligent  point  of  departure 
into  her  working  life,  and  a place  to  which  she 
may  turn  in  time  of  need,  for  help  and  advice 


!A.N  ANCIENT  EVIL 


129 


through  those  long  and  dangerous  periods  of 
unemployment  which  are  now  so  inimical  to  her 
character. 

This  same  British  commission  divided  all  of 
the  unemployed,  the  under-employed,  and  the 
unemployable  as  the  results  of  three  types  of 
trades : first,  the  subsidized  labor  trades,  wherein 
women  and  children  are  paid  wages  insufficient 
to  maintain  them  at  the  required  standard  of 
health  and  industrial  efficiency,  so  that  their 
wages  must  be  supplemented  by  relatives  or 
charity;  second,  labor  deteriorating  trades, 
which  have  sapped  the  energy,  the  capacity, 
the  character,  of  workers;  third,  bare  subsistence 
trades,  where  the  worker  is  forced  to  such  a low 
level  in  his  standard  of  life  that  he  continually 
falls  below  self-support.  We  have  many  trades 
of  these  three  types  in  America,  all  of  them 
demanding  the  work  of  young  and  untrained  girls. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  obvious  dangers  surrounding 
every  girl  who  enters  one  of  them,  little  is  done 
to  guide  the  multitude  of  children  who  leave 
school  prematurely  each  year  into  reasonable 
occupations. 

Unquestionably  the  average  American  child 


130 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


has  received  a more  expensive  education  than 
has  yet  been  accorded  to  the  child  of  any  other 
nation.  The  girls  working  in  department  stores 
have  been  in  the  public  schools  on  an  average 
of  eight  years,  while  even  the  factory  girls, 
who  so  often  leave  school  from  the  lower  grades, 
have  yet  averaged  six  and  two-tenths  years  of 
education  at  the  public  expense,  before  they 
enter  industrial  life.  Certainly  the  community 
that  has  accomplished  so  much  could  afford 
them  help  and  oversight  for  six  and  a half  years 
longer,  which  is  the  average  length  of  time  that 
a working  girl  is  employed.  The  state  might 
well  undertake  this,  if  only  to  secure  its  former 
investment  and  to  save  that  investment  from 
utter  loss. 

Our  generation,  said  to  have  developed  a 
new  enthusiasm  for  the  possibilities  of  child 
life,  and  to  have  put  fresh  meaning  into  the 
phrase  “children’s  rights,”  may  at  last  have  the 
courage  to  insist  upon  a child’s  right  to  be  well 
born  and  to  start  in  life  with  its  tiny  body  free 
from  disease.  Certainly  allied  to  this  new  un- 
derstanding of  child  life  and  a part  of  the  same 
movement  is  the  new  science  of  eugenics  with  its 


AN'  ANCIENT  EVIL 


131 


recently  appointed  university  professors.  Its 
organized  societies  publish  an  ever-increasing 
mass  of  information  as  to  that  which  constitutes 
the  inheritance  of  well-born  children.  When 
this  new  science  makes  clear  to  the  public  that 
those  diseases  which  are  a direct  outcome  of  the 
social  evil  are  clearly  responsible  for  race  dete- 
rioration, effective  indignation  may  at  last  be 
aroused,  both  against  the  preventable  infant 
mortality  for  which  these  diseases  are  responsible, 
and  against  the  ghastly  fact  that  the  survivors 
among  these  afflicted  children  infect  their  con- 
temporaries and  hand  on  the  evil  heritage  to 
another  generation.  Public  societies  for  the 
prevention  of  blindness  are  continually  distrib- 
uting information  on  the  care  of  new-born 
children  and  may  at  length  answer  that  old, 
confusing  question  “Did  this  man  sin  or  his 
parents,  that  he  was  born  blind?”  Such  knowl- 
edge is  becoming  more  widespread  every  day 
and  the  rising  interest  in  infant  welfare  must  in 
time  re-act  upon  the  very  existence  of  the  social 
evil  itself. 

This  new  public  concern  for  the  welfare  of  little 
children  in  certain  American  cities  has  resulted 


132 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


in  a municipal  milk  supply;  in  many  German 
cities,  in  free  hospitals  and  nurseries.  New  York, 
Chicago,  Boston  and  other  large  towns,  employ 
hundreds  of  nurses  each  summer  to  instruct 
tenement-house  mothers  upon  the  care  of  httle 
children.  Doubtless  all  of  this  enthusiasm  for 
the  nurture  of  children  will  at  last  arouse  public 
opinion  in  regard  to  the  transmission  of  that  one 
type  of  disease  which  thousands  of  them  annu- 
ally inherit,  and  which  is  directly  traceable  to 
the  vicious  living  of  their  parents  or  grand- 
parents. This  slaughter  of  the  innocents,  this 
infliction  of  suffering  upon  the  new-born,  is  so 
gratuitous  and  so  unfair,  that  it  is  only  a question 
of  time  until  an  outraged  sense  of  justice  shall 
be  aroused  on  behalf  of  these  children.  But 
even  before  help  comes  through  chivalric  senti- 
ments, governmental  and  municipal  agencies  will 
decline  to  spend  the  tax-payers’  money  for  the 
relief  of  suffering  infants,  when  by  the  exertion 
of  the  same  authority  they  could  easily  provide 
against  the  possibility  of  the  birth  of  a child  so 
afflicted.  It  is  obvious  that  the  average  tax- 
payer would  be  moved  to  demand  the  exter- 
mination of  that  form  of  vice  which  has  been 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


133 


declared  illegal,  although  it  still  flourishes  by 
official  connivance,  did  he  once  clearly  apprehend 
that  it  is  responsible  for  the  existence  of  these 
diseases  which  cost  him  so  dear.  It  is  only  his 
ignorance  which  makes  him  remain  inert  until 
each  victim  of  the  white  slave  traffic  shall  be 
avenged  unto  the  third  and  fourth  generation 
of  them  that  bought  her.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  the  tax-payer  will  himself  contend  that, 
as  the  state  does  not  legalize  a marriage  without 
a license  officially  recorded,  that  the  status  of 
children  may  be  clearly  defined,  so  the  state 
would  need  to  go  but  one  step  further  in  the  same 
direction,  to  insist  upon  health  certificates  from 
the  applicant  for  a marriage  license,  that  the 
health  of  future  children  might  in  a certain  meas- 
ure, be  guaranteed.  Whether  or  not  this  step 
may  be  predicted,  the  mere  discussion  of  this 
matter  in  itself,  is  an  indication  of  the  changing 
public  opinion,  as  is  the  fact  that  such  legislation 
has  already  been  enacted  in  two  states,  which 
are  only  now  putting  into  action  the  recommenda- 
tion made  centuries  ago  by  such  social  philoso- 
phers as  Plato  and  Sir  Thomas  More.  A sense 
of  justice  outraged  by  the  wanton  destruction  of 


134 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


new-born  children,  may  in  time  unite  with  that 
ardent  tide  of  rising  enthusiasm  for  the  nurture 
of  the  young,  until  the  old  barriers  of  silence  and 
inaction,  behind  which  the  social  evil  has  so  long 
intrenched  itself,  shall  at  last  give  way. 

Certainly  it  will  soon  be  found  that  the  senti- 
ment of  pity,  so  recently  aroused  throughout  the 
country  on  behalf  of  the  victims  of  the  white 
slave  traffic,  will  be  totally  unable  to  afford  them 
protection  unless  it  becomes  incorporated  in 
government.  It  is  possible  that  we  are  on  the 
eve  of  a series  of  legislative  enactments  similar 
to  those  which  resulted  from  the  attempts  to 
regulate  child  labor.  Through  the  entire  course 
of  the  last  century,  in  that  anticipation  of  coming 
changes  which  does  so  much  to  bring  changes 
about,  the  friends  of  the  children  were  steadily 
engaged  in  making  a new  state,  from  the  ffist 
child  labor  law  passed  in  the  English  parlia- 
ment in  1803  to  the  final  passage  of  the  so-called 
children’s  charter  in  1909.  During  the  long 
century  of  transforming  pity  into  political  action 
there  was  created  that  social  s3Tnpathy  which 
has  become  one  of  the  greatest  forces  in  modem 
legislation,  and  to  which  we  ma^’  confidently 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


135 


appeal  in  this  new  crusade  against  the  social 
evil. 

Another  point  of  similarity  to  the  child  labor 
movement  is  obvious,  for  the  friends  of  the 
children  early  found  that  they  needed  much 
statistical  information  and  that  the  great  problem 
of  the  would-be  reformer  is  not  so  much  over- 
coming actual  opposition — the  passing  of  time 
gradually  does  that  for  him — as  obtaining  and 
formulating  accurate  knowledge  and  fitting 
that  knowledge  into  the  trend  of  his  time. 
From  this  point  of  view  and  upon  the  basis  of 
what  has  already  been  accomplished  for  “the 
protection  of  minors,”  the  many  recent  investi- 
gations which  have  revealed  the  extreme  youth 
of  the  victims  of  the  white  slave  traffic,  should 
make  legislation  on  their  behalf  all  the  more 
feasible.  Certainly  no  reformer  could  ever 
more  legitimately  make  an  emotional  appeal  to 
the  higher  sensibility  of  the  public. 

In  the  rescue  homes  recently  opened  in  Chicago 
by  the  White  Slave  Traffic  Committee  of  the 
League  of  Cook  County  Clubs,  the  tender  ages 
of  the  little  girls  who  were  brought  there  horrified 
the  good  clubwomen  more  than  any  other  aspect 


136  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

of  the  situation.  A number  of  the  little  inmates 
in  the  home  wanted  to  play  with  dolls  and  several 
of  them  brought  dolls  of  their  own,  which  they 
had  kept  with  them  through  all  their  vicissitudes. 
There  is  something  literally  heart-breaking  in 
the  thought  of  these  little  children  who  are  en- 
snared and  debauched  when  they  are  still  young 
enough  to  have  every  right  to  protection  and 
care.  Quite  recently  I visited  a home  for  semi- 
delinquent girls  against  each  one  of  whom  stood 
a grave  charge  involving  the  loss  of  her  chastity. 
Upon  each  of  the  little  white  beds  or  on  one  of 
the  stiff  chairs  standing  by  its  side  was  a doll 
belonging  to  a delinquent  owner  still  young 
enough  to  love  and  cherish  this  supreme  toy  of 
childhood.  I had  come  to  the  home  prepared 
to  “lecture  to  the  inmates.”  I remained  to  dress 
dolls  with  a handful  of  little  girls  who  eagerly 
asked  questions  about  the  dolls  I had  once 
possessed  in  a childhood  which  seemed  to  them 
so  remote.  Looking  at  the  little  victims  who 
supply  the  white  slave  trade,  one  is  reminded  of 
the  burning  words  of  Dr.  Howard  Kelly  uttered 
in  response  to  the  demand  that  the  social  evil 
be  legalized  and  its  victims  licensed.  He  says: 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


137 


“Where  shall  we  look  to  recruit  the  ever-failing 
ranks  of  these  poor  creatures  as  they  die  yearly 
by  the  tens  of  thousands?  Which  of  the  little 
girls  of  our  land  shall  we  designate  for  this  traffic? 
Mark  their  sweet  innocence  to-day  as  they  run 
about  in  our  streets  and  parks  prattling  and 
playing,  ever  busy  about  nothing;  which  of  them 
shall  we  snatch  as  they  approach  maturity,  to 
supply  this  foul  mart?” 

It  is  incomprehensible  that  a nation  whose 
chief  boast  is  its  free  public  education,  that  a 
people  always  ready  to  respond  to  any  moral  or 
financial  appeal  made  in  the  name  of  children, 
should  permit  this  infamy  against  childhood  to 
continue!  Only  the  protection  of  all  children 
from  the  menacing  temptations  which  their 
youth  is  unable  to  withstand,  will  prevent  some 
of  them  from  falling  victims  to  the  white  slave 
traffic;  only  when  moral  education  is  made 
effective  and  universal  will  there  be  hope  for  the 
actual  abolition  of  commercialized  vice.  These 
are  illustrations  perhaps  of  that  curious  solidarity 
of  which  society  is  so  rapidly  becoming  conscious. 


PHILANTHROPIC  RESCUE 
AND  PREVENTION 


CHAPTER  V 


PHILANTHROPIC  RESCUE  AND 
PREVENTION 

There  is  no  doubt  that  philanthropy  often 
reflects  and  dramatizes  the  modern  sensitiveness 
of  the  community  in  relation  to  a social  wrong, 
because  those  engaged  in  the  rescue  of  the  victims 
are  able  to  apprehend,  through  their  daily  experi- 
ences, many  aspects  of  a recogmized  evil  concern- 
ing which  the  public  are  ignorant  and  therefore 
indifferent.  However  ancient  a wrong  may  be, 
in  each  generation  it  must  become  newly  em- 
bodied in  living  people  and  the  social  custom  into 
which  it  has  hardened  through  the  years,  must  be 
continued  in  individual  lives.  Unless  the  con- 
temporaries of  such  unhappy  individuals  are 
touched  to  tenderness  or  stirred  to  indignation 
by  the  actual  embodiments  of  the  old  wrong  in 
their  own  generation,  effective  action  cannot  be 
secimed. 

The  social  evil  has,  on  the  whole,  received  less 


142 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


philanthropic  effort  than  any  other  well-recog- 
nized menace  to  the  community,  largely  because 
there  is  something  peculiarly  distasteful  and 
distressing  in  personal  acquaintance  with  its 
victims;  a distaste  and  distress  that  sometimes 
leads  to  actual  nervous  collapse.  A distinguished 
Englishman  has  recently  written  “that  sober- 
minded  people  who,  from  motives  of  pity,  have 
looked  the  hideous  evil  full  in  the  face,  have 
often  asserted  that  nothing  in  their  experience 
has  seemed  to  threaten  them  so  nearly  with  a 
loss  of  reason.” 

Nevertheless,  this  comparative  lack  of  philan- 
thropic effort  is  the  more  remarkable  because  the 
average  age  of  the  recruits  to  prostitution  is 
between  sixteen  and  eighteen  years,  the  age  at 
which  girls  are  still  minors  under  the  law  in 
respect  to  all  matters  of  property.  We  allow  a 
minor  to  determine  for  herself  whether  or  not 
she  vill  live  this  most  abominable  life,  although 
if  she  resolve  to  be  a thief  she  will,  if  possible,  be 
apprehended  and  imprisoned;  if  she  become  a 
vagrant  she  will  be  restrained;  even  if  she 
become  a professional  beggar,  she  will  be  inter- 
fered with;  but  the  decision  to  lead  this  e\dl  life. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


143 


disastrous  alike  to  herself  and  the  community, 
although  well  knoAvn  to  the  police,  is  openly 
permitted.  If  a man  has  seized  upon  a moment 
of  weakness  in  a girl  and  obtained  her  consent, 
although  she  may  thereafter  be  in  dire  need  of 
help  she  is  put  outside  all  protection  of  the  law. 
The  courts  assume  that  such  a girl  has  deliberately 
decided  for  herself  and  that  because  she  is  not 
“of  previous  chaste  life  and  character,”  she  is 
lost  to  all  decency.  Yet  every  human  being 
knows  deep  down  in  his  heart  that  his  own  moral 
energy  ebbs  and  flows,  that  he  could  not  be 
judged  fairly  by  his  hours  of  defeat,  and  that  after 
revealing  moments  of  weakness,  although  shocked 
and  frightened,  he  is  the  same  human  being, 
struggling  as  he  did  before.  Nevertheless  in 
some  states,  a little  girl  as  young  as  ten  years  of 
age  may  make  this  irrevocable  decision  for 
herself. 

Modern  philanthropy,  continually  discovering 
new  aspects  of  prostitution  through  the  aid  of 
economics,  sanitary  science,  statistical  research, 
and  many  other  agencies,  finds  that  this  increase 
of  knowledge  inevitably  leads  it  from  the  attempt 
to  rescue  the  victims  of  white  slavery  to  a con- 


144  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

sideration  of  the  abolition  of  the  monstrous 
wrong  itself.  At  the  present  moment  philan- 
thropy is  gradually  impelled  to  a consideration  of 
prostitution  in  relation  to  the  welfare  and  the 
orderly  existence  of  society  itself.  If  the  moral 
fire  seems  at  times  to  be  dying  out  of  certain  good 
old  words,  such  as  charity,  it  is  filling  with  new 
warmth  such  words  as  social  justice,  which 
belong  distinctively  to  our  own  time.  It  is  also 
true  that  those  for  whom  these  w^ords  contain 
most  of  hope  and  warmth  are  those  who  have 
been  long  mindful  of  the  old  tasks  and  obligations, 
as  if  the  great  basic  emotion  of  human  compas- 
sion had  more  than  held  its  own.  Certainly  the 
youth  of  many  of  the  victims  of  the  white  slave 
traffic,  and  the  helplessness  of  the  older  girls  who 
find  themselves  caught  in  the  grip  of  an  enor- 
mous force  which  they  caimot  comprehend, 
make  a most  pitiful  appeal.  Philanthropy  more- 
over discovers  many  young  girls,  who  if  they  had 
not  been  rescued  by  protective  agencies  would 
have  become  permanent  outcasts,  although  they 
would  have  entered  a disreputable  life  through 
no  fault  of  their  own. 

The  illustrations  in  this  chapter  are  all  taken 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


145 


from  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  of 
Chicago  in  connection  with  its  efforts  to  save 
girls  from  overwhelming  temptation.  Doubtless 
many  other  associations  could  offer  equally 
convincing  testimony,  for  in  recent  years  the 
number  of  people  to  whom  the  very  existence 
of  the  white  slave  traffic  has  become  unendurable 
and  who  are  determinedly  working  against  it, 
has  enormously  increased. 

A surprising  number  of  country  girls  have  been 
either  brought  to  Chicago  under  false  pretences, 
or  have  been  decoyed  into  an  evil  life  very  soon 
after  their  arrival  in  the  city.  Mr.  Clifford  Roe 
estimates  that  more  than  half  of  the  girls  who 
have  been  recruited  into  a disreputable  life  in 
Chicago  have  come  from  the  farms  and  smaller 
towns  in  Illinois  and  from  neighboring  states. 
This  estimate  is  borne  out  by  the  records  of 
Paris  and  other  metropolitan  cities  in  which  it 
is  universally  estimated  that  a little  less  than 
one-third  of  the  prostitutes  found  in  them,  at  any 
given  moment,  are  city  born. 

The  experience  of  a pretty  girl  who  came  to 
the  office  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association, 
a year  ago,  is  fairly  typical  of  the  argument  many 


146 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


of  these  country  girls  offer  in  their  own  defense. 
This  girl  had  been  a hotel  chambermaid  in  an 
Iowa  towm  where  many  of  the  traveling  patrons 
of  the  hotel  had  made  love  to  her,  one  of  them 
occasionally  offering  her  protection  if  she  would 
leave  with  him.  At  first  she  indignantly  refused, 
but  was  at  length  convinced  that  the  acceptance 
of  such  offers  must  be  a very  general  practice 
and  that,  whatever  might  be  the  custom  in  the 
country,  no  one  in  a city  made  personal  inquiries. 
She  finally  consented  to  accompany  a young 
man  to  Seattle,  both  because  she  wanted  to 
travel  and  because  she  was  discouraged  in  her 
attempts  to  “be  good.”  A few  weeks  later, 
when  in  Chicago,  she  had  left  the  young  man, 
acting  from  what  she  considered  a point  of  honor, 
as  his  invitation  had  been  limited  to  the  journey 
which  was  now  completed.  Feeling  too  dis- 
graced to  go  home  and  under  the  glamour  of  the 
life  of  idleness  she  had  been  leading,  she  had  gone 
voluntarily  into  a disreputable  house,  in  which 
the  police  had  found  her  and  sent  her  to  the 
Association.  She  could  not  be  persuaded  to 
give  up  her  plan,  but  consented  to  wait  for  a few 
days  to  “think  it  over.”  As  she  w’as  leaving 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


147 


the  office  in  company  with  a representative  of 
the  Association,  they  met  the  young  man,  who 
had  been  distractedly  searching  for  her  and  had 
just  discovered  her  whereabouts.  She  was  mar- 
ried the  very  same  day  and  of  course  the  Associa- 
tion never  saw  her  again. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  traffickers  in 
white  slaves,  it  is  much  cheaper  and  safer  to 
procure  country  girls  after  they  have  reached 
the  city.  Such  girls  are  in  constant  danger 
because  they  are  much  more  easily  secreted  than 
girls  procured  from  the  city.  A country  girl 
entering  a vicious  life  quickly  feels  the  disgrace 
and  soon  becomes  too  broken-spirited  and  dis- 
couraged to  make  any  effort  to  escape  into  the 
unknown  city  which  she  believes  to  be  full  of 
horrors  similar  to  those  she  has  already  encoun- 
tered. She  desires  above  all  things  to  deceive 
her  family  at  home,  often  sending  money  to  them 
regularly  and  writing  letters  describing  a fictitious 
life  of  hard  work.  Perhaps  the  most  flagrant 
case  with  which  the  Association  ever  dealt,  was 
that  of  two  young  girls  who  had  come  to  Chicago 
from  a village  in  West  Virginia,  hoping  to  earn 
large  wages  in  order  to  help  their  families.  They 


148 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


arrived  in  the  city  penniless,  having  been  robbed 
en  route  of  their  one  slender  purse.  As  they 
stood  in  the  railway  station,  utterly  bewildered, 
they  were  accosted  by  a young  man  who  presented 
the  advertising  card  of  a boarding-house  and 
offered  to  take  them  there.  They  quite  in- 
nocently accepted  his  invitation,  but  an  hour 
later,  finding  themselves  in  a locked  room,  they 
became  frightened  and  realized  they  had  been 
duped.  Fortunately  the  two  agile  country  girls 
had  no  difficulty  in  jumping  from  a second -story 
window,  but  upon  the  street  they  were  of  course 
much  too  frightened  to  speak  to  anyone  again 
and  wandered  about  for  hours.  The  house 
from  which  they  had  escaped  bore  the  sign 
“rooms  to  rent,”  and  they  therefore  carefully 
avoided  all  houses  whose  placards  offered  shelter. 
Finally,  when  they  were  desperate  with  hunger, 
they  went  into  a saloon  for  a “free  Ixmch,”  not 
in  the  least  realizing  that  thej'’  were  expected  to 
take  a drink  in  order  to  receive  it.  A pofice- 
man,  seeing  two  yoimg  girls  in  a saloon  “with- 
out escort,”  arrested  them  and  took  them  to  the 
nearest  station  where  they  spent  the  night  in  a 
wretched  cell. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


149 


At  the  hearing  the  next  morning,  where,  much 
frightened,  they  gave  a very  incoherent  account 
of  their  adventures,  the  judge  fined  them  each 
fifteen  dollars  and  costs,  and  as  they  were  unable 
to  pay  the  fine,  they  were  ordered  sent  to  the 
city  prison.  When  they  were  escorted  from  the 
court  room,  another  man  approached  them  and 
offered  to  pay  their  fines  if  they  would  go 
with  him.  Frightened  by  their  former  experience, 
they  stoutly  declined  his  help,  but  were  over- 
persuaded by  his  graphic  portrayal  of  prison 
horrors  and  the  disgrace  that  their  imprison- 
ment would  bring  upon  “the  folks  at  home.”  He 
also  made  clear  that  when  they  came  out  of 
prison,  thirty  days  later,  they  would  be  no  better 
off  than  they  were  now,  save  that  they  would 
have  the  added  stigma  of  being  jail-birds.  The 
girls  at  last  reluctantly  consented  to  go  with 
him,  when  a representative  of  the  Juvenile  Pro- 
tective Association,  who  had  followed  them  from 
the  court  room  and  had  listened  to  the  conversa- 
tion, insisted  upon  the  prompt  arrest  of  the 
white  slave  trader.  When  the  entire  story, 
finally  secured  from  the  girls,  was  related  to  the 
judge,  he  reversed  his  decision,  fined  the  man 


150 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


$100.00,  which  he  was  abundantly  able  to  pay, 
and  insisted  that  the  girls  be  sent  back  to  their 
mothers  in  Virginia.  They  were  farmers’  daughters, 
strong  and  capable  of  taking  care  of  themselves  in 
an  environment  that  they  understood,  but  in  con- 
stant danger  because  of  their  ignorance  of  city  life. 

The  methods  employed  to  secure  city  girls 
must  be  much  more  subtle  and  complicated  than 
those  employed  with  the  less  sophisticated  coun- 
try girl.  Although  the  city  girl,  once  procured, 
is  later  allowed  more  freedom  than  is  accorded 
either  to  a country  girl  or  to  an  immigrant  girl, 
every  effort  is  made  to  demoralize  her  completely 
before  she  enters  the  life.  Because  she  may, 
at  any  moment,  escape  into  the  city  which  she 
knows  so  well,  it  is  necessary  to  obtain  her  inner 
consent.  Those  whose  profession  it  is  to  procure 
girls  for  the  white  slave  trade  apparently  find 
it  possible  to  decoy  and  demoralize  most  easily 
that  city  girl  whose  need  for  recreation  has  led 
her  to  the  disreputable  public  dance  hall  or  other 
questionable  places  of  amusement. 

Gradually  those  philanthropic  agencies  that 
are  endeavoring  to  be  of  service  to  the  girls 
learn  to  know  the  dangers  in  these  places.  Many 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


151 


parents  are  utterly  indifferent  or  ignorant  of  the 
pleasures  that  their  children  find  for  themselves. 
From  the  time  these  children  were  five  years  old, 
such  parents  were  accustomed  to  see  them  take 
care  of  themselves  on  the  street  and  at  school, 
and  it  seems  but  natural  that  when  the  children 
are  old  enough  to  earn  money,  they  should  be 
able  to  find  their  own  amusements. 

The  girls  are  attracted  to  the  unregulated 
dance  halls  not  only  by  a love  of  pleasure  but 
by  a sense  of  adventure,  and  it  is  in  these  places 
that  they  are  most  easily  recruited  for  a vicious 
life.  Unfortunately  there  are  three  hundred  and 
twenty-eight  public  dance  halls  in  Chicago,  one 
hundred  and  ninety  of  them  connect  directly 
with  saloons,  while  liquor  is  openly  sold  in  most 
of  the  others.  This  consumption  of  liquor  enor- 
mously increases  the  danger  to  young  people. 
A girl  after  a long  day’s  work  is  easily  induced 
to  believe  that  a drink  will  dispel  her  lassitude. 
There  is  plenty  of  time  between  the  dances  to 
persuade  her,  as  the  intermissions  are  long, 
fifteen  to  twenty  minutes,  and  the  dances  short, 
occupying  but  four  or  five  minutes;  moreover  the 
halls  are  hot  and  dusty  and  it  is  almost  impossible 


152 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


to  obtain  a drink  of  water.  Often  the  entire 
purpose  of  the  dance  hall,  with  its  carefully 
arranged  intermissions,  is  the  selling  of  liquor 
to  the  people  it  has  brought  together.  After 
the  girl  has  begun  to  drink,  the  way  of  the  pro- 
curer, who  is  often  in  league  with  the  “spieler” 
who  frequents  the  dance  hall,  is  comparatively 
easy.  He  assumes  one  of  two  roles,  that  of  the 
sympathetic  older  man  or  that  of  the  eager  young 
lover.  In  the  character  of  the  former,  he  tells 
“the  down-trodden  working  girl”  that  her  wages 
are  a mere  pittance  and  that  he  can  procure  a 
better  place  for  her  with  higher  wages  if  she  will 
trust  him.  He  often  makes  allusions  to  the 
shabbiness  or  cheapness  of  her  clothing  and  con- 
siders it  “a  shame  that  such  a pretty  girl  cannot 
dress  better.”  In  the  second  role  he  apparently 
falls  in  love  with  her,  tells  of  his  rich  parents, 
complaining  that  they  want  him  to  marry,  “a 
society  swell,”  but  that  he  really  prefers  a working 
girl  like  herself.  In  either  case  he  establishes 
friendly  relations,  exalted  in  the  girl’s  mind, 
through  the  excitement  of  the  liquor  and  the 
dance,  into  a new  sense  of  intimate  understanding 
and  protection. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


153 


Later  in  the  evening,  she  leaves  the  hall  with 
him  for  a restaurant  because,  as  he  truthfully 
says,  she  is  exhausted  and  in  need  of  food.  At 
the  supper,  however,  she  drinks  much  more,  and 
it  is  not  surprising  that  she  is  at  last  persuaded 
that  it  is  too  late  to  go  home  and  in  the  end  con- 
sents to  spend  the  rest  of  the  night  in  a nearby 
lodging  house.  Six  young  girls,  each  accom- 
panied by  a “spieler”  from  a dance  hall,  were 
recently  followed  to  a chop  suey  restaurant  and 
then  to  a lodging-house,  which  the  police  were 
instigated  to  raid  and  where  the  six  girls,  more  or 
less  intoxicated,  were  found.  If  no  one  rescues 
the  girl  after  such  an  experience,  she  sometimes 
does  not  return  home  at  all,  or  if  she  does,  feels 
herself  initiated  into  a new  world  where  it  is 
possible  to  obtain  money  at  will,  to  easily 
secure  the  pleasures  it  brings,  and  she  comes  at 
length  to  consider  herself  superior  to  her  less 
sophisticated  companions.  Of  course  this  latter 
state  of  mind  is  untenable  for  any  length  of  time 
and  the  girl  is  soon  found  openly  leading  a dis- 
reputable life. 

The  girls  attending  the  cheap  theatres  and  the 
vaudeville  shows  are  most  commonly  approached 


154  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

through  their  vanity.  They  readily  listen  to  the 
triumphs  of  a stage  career,  sure  to  be  attained 
by  such  a "good  looker,”  and  a large  number  of 
them  follow  a young  man  to  the  woman  with 
whom  he  is  in  partnership,  under  the  promise  of 
being  introduced  to  a theatrical  manager.  There 
are  also  theatrical  agencies  in  league  with  dis- 
reputable places,  who  advertise  for  pretty  girls, 
promising  large  salaries.  Such  an  agency  oper- 
ating with  a well-known  "near  theatre”  in  the 
state  capital  was  recently  prosecuted  in  Chicago 
and  its  license  revoked.  In  this  connection 
the  experience  of  two  young  English  girls  is 
not  unusual.  They  were  sisters  possessed  of 
an  extraordinary  skill  in  juggling,  who  were 
brought  to  this  country  by  a relative  acting  as 
their  manager.  Although  he  exploited  them  for 
his  own  benefit  for  three  years,  paying  them  the 
most  meager  salaries  and  suppljdng  them  vdth 
the  simplest  living  in  the  towns  which  they 
"toured,”  he  had  protected  them  from  aU  immor- 
ality, and  they  had  preserved  the  clean  living  of 
the  family  of  acrobats  to  which  they  belonged. 
Last  October,  when  appearing  in  San  Francisco, 
the  girls,  then  sixteen  and  seventeen  years  of 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


155 


age,  demanded  more  pay  than  the  dollar  and 
twenty  cents  a week  each  had  been  receiving, 
representing  the  five  shillings  with  which  they 
had  started  from  home.  The  manager,  who  had 
become  discouraged  with  his  American  experience, 
refused  to  accede  to  their  demands,  gave  them 
each  a ticket  for  Chicago,  and  heartlessly  turned 
them  adrift.  Arriving  in  the  city,  they  quite 
naturally  at  once  applied  to  a theatrical  agency, 
through  which  they  were  sent  to  a disreputable 
house  where  a vaudeville  program  was  given 
each  night.  Delighted  that  they  had  found 
work  so  quickly,  they  took  the  position  in  good 
faith.  During  the  very  first  performance,  how- 
ever, they  became  frightened  by  the  conduct  of 
the  girls  who  preceded  them  on  the  program  and 
by  the  hilarity  of  the  audience.  They  managed 
to  escape  from  the  dressing-room,  where  they 
were  waiting  their  turn,  and  on  the  street  appealed 
to  the  first  policeman,  who  brought  them  to  the 
Juvenile  Protective  Association.  They  were  de- 
tained for  several  days  as  witnesses  against  the 
theatrical  agency,  entering  into  the  legal  prosecu- 
tion with  that  characteristic  British  spirit  which 
is  ever  ready  to  protest  against  an  imposition. 


156  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

before  they  left  the  city  with  a travelling  com- 
pany, each  on  a weekly  salary  of  twenty  dollars. 

The  methods  pursued  on  excursion  boats  are 
similar  to  those  of  the  dance  halls,  in  that  decent 
girls  are  induced  to  drink  quantities  of  liquor  to 
which  they  are  unaccustomed.  On  the  high 
seas,  liquor  is  sold  usually  in  original  packages, 
which  enormously  increases  the  amount  con- 
siuned.  It  is  not  unusual  to  see  a boy  and  girl 
drinking  between  them  an  entire  bottle  of  whis- 
key. Some  of  these  excursion  boats  carry  five 
thousand  people  and  in  the  easy  breakdown  of 
propriety  which  holiday-making  often  imphes, 
and  the  absence  of  police,  to  which  city  young 
people  are  unaccustomed,  the  utmost  freedom 
and  license  is  often  indulged  in.  Thus  the  lake 
excursions,  one  of  the  most  delightful  possibiUties 
for  recreation  in  Chicago,  through  lack  of  proper 
policing  and  through  the  sale  of  liquor,  are  made 
a menace  to  thousands  of  young  people  to 
whom  they  should  be  a great  resource. 

When  a philanthropic  association,  with  a 
knowledge  of  the  commercial  exploitation  of 
youth’s  natural  response  to  gay  surroundings, 
attempts  to  substitute  imiocent  recreation,  it 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


157 


finds  the  undertaking  most  difficult.  In  Chicago 
the  Juvenile  Protective  Association,  after  a 
thorough  investigation  of  public  dance  halls, 
amusement  parks,  five-cent  theatres,  and  excur- 
sion boats,  is  insisting  upon  more  vigorous  en- 
forcement of  the  existing  legislation,  and  is  also 
urging  further  legal  regulation;  Kansas  City 
has  instituted  a Department  of  Public  Welfare 
with  power  to  regulate  places  of  amusement;  a 
New  York  committee  has  established  model 
dance  halls;  Milwaukee  is  urging  the  appoint- 
ment of  commissions  on  public  recreation,  while 
New  York  and  Columbus  have  already  created 
them. 

Perhaps  nothing  in  actual  operation  is  more 
valuable  than  the  small  parks  of  Chicago  in 
which  the  large  halls  are  used  every  evening  for 
dancing  and  where  outdoor  sports,  swimming 
pools  and  gymnasiums  daily  attract  thousands 
of  young  people.  Unless  cities  make  some  such 
provision  for  their  youth,  those  who  sell  the 
facilities  for  amusement  in  order  to  make  a profit 
will  continue  to  exploit  the  normal  desire  of  all 
young  people  for  recreation  and  pleasure.  The 
city  of  Chicago  contains  at  present  eight  hundred 


158  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

and  fourteen  thousand  minors,  all  eager  for 
pleasure.  It  is  not  surprising  that  commercial 
enterprise  undertakes  to  supply  this  demand  and 
that  penny  arcades,  slot  machines,  candy  stores, 
ice-cream  parlors,  moving-picture  shows,  skating 
rinks,  cheap  theatres  and  dance  halls  are  trying 
to  attract  young  people  with  every  device  known 
to  modern  advertising.  Their  promoters  are,  of 
course,  careless  of  the  moral  effect  upon  their 
young  customers  if  they  can  but  secure  their 
money.  Until  municipal  provisions  adequately 
meet  this  need,  philanthropic  and  social  organi- 
zations must  be  committed  to  the  establishment 
of  more  adequate  recreational  facilities. 

Although  many  dangers  are  encountered  by 
the  pleasure-loving  girl  who  demands  that  each 
evening  shall  bring  her  some  measure  of  recrea- 
tion, a large  number  of  girls  meet  with  difficulties 
and  temptations  while  soberly  at  work.  Many 
of  these  tempted  girls  are  newly-arrived  immi- 
grant girls  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty, 
who  find  their  first  w'ork  in  hotels.  Polish  girls 
especially  are  utilized  in  hotel  kitchens  and  laun- 
dries, and  for  the  interminable  scrubbing  of  halls 
and  lobbies  where  a knowledge  of  the  English 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


159 


language  is  not  necessary,  but  where  their  peas- 
ant strength  is  in  demand.  The  work  is  very 
heavy  and  fatiguing  and  until  the  Illinois  law 
limited  the  work  of  women  to  ten  hours  a day, 
it  often  lasted  late  into  the  night.  Even  now 
the  girls  report  themselves  so  tired  that  at  the 
end  of  the  day,  they  crowd  into  the  dormitories 
and  fall  upon  their  beds  undressed.  When  food 
and  shelter  is  given  them,  their  wages  are  from 
$14.00  to  $18.00  a month,  most  of  which  is 
usually  sent  back  to  the  old  country,  that  the 
remaining  members  of  the  family  may  be  brought 
to  America.  Such  positions  are  surrounded  by 
temptations  of  every  sort.  Even  the  hotel 
housekeepers,  who  are  honestly  trying  to  pro- 
tect the  girls,  admit  that  it  is  impossible  to 
do  it  adequately.  One  of  these  housekeepers 
recently  said  “that  it  takes  a girl  who  knows  the 
world  to  work  in  any  hotel,”  and  regretted 
that  the  sophisticated  English-speaking  girl  who 
might  protect  herself,  was  unable  to  endure  the 
hard  work.  She  added  that  as  soon  as  a girl 
learned  English  she  promoted  her  from  the 
laundry  to  the  halls  and  from  there  to  the  posi- 
tion of  chambermaid,  but  that  the  latter  position 


160 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


was  the  most  dangerous  of  all,  as  the  girls  were 
constantly  exposed  to  insults  from  the  guests. 
In  the  less  respectable  hotels  these  newly -arrived 
immigrant  girls,  inevitably  seeing  a great  deal  of 
the  life  of  the  underworld  and  the  apparent  ease 
with  which  money  may  be  earned  in  illicit  ways, 
find  their  first  impression  of  the  moral  standards 
of  life  in  America  most  bewildering.  One  young 
Polish  girl  had  worked  for  two  years  in  a down- 
town hotel,  and  had  steadfastly  resisted  all 
improper  advances  even  sometimes  by  the 
aid  of  her  own  powerful  fist.  She  yielded  at  last 
to  the  suggestions  of  the  life  about  her  when 
she  received  a telegram  from  Ellis  Island  stating 
that  her  mother  had  arrived  in  New  York,  but 
was  too  ill  to  be  sent  on  to  Chicago.  All  of  her 
money  had  gone  for  the  steamer  ticket  and  as 
the  thought  of  her  old  country  mother,  ill  and 
alone  among  strangers,  was  too  much  for  her 
long  fortitude,  she  made  the  best  bargain  possible 
with  the  head  waiter  whose  importunities  she 
had  hitherto  resisted,  accepted  the  little  purse 
the  other  Polish  girls  in  the  hotel  collected  for 
her  and  arrived  in  New  York  only  to  find  that 
her  mother  had  died  the  night  before. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


161 


The  simple  obedience  to  parents  on  the  part 
of  these  immigrant  girls,  working  in  hotels  and 
restaurants,  often  miscarries  pathetically.  Their 
unspoiled  human  nature,  not  yet  immune  to 
the  poisons  of  city  life,  when  thrust  into  the 
midst  of  that  unrelieved  drudgery  which  lies 
at  the  foundation  of  all  complex  luxury, 
often  results  in  the  most  fatal  reactions.  A 
young  German  woman,  the  proprietor  of  what 
is  considered  a successful  “house”  in  the 
most  notorious  district  in  Chicago,  traces  her 
career  directly  to  a desperate  attempt  to  con- 
form to  the  standard  of  “bringing  home  good 
wages”  maintained  by  her  numerous  brothers  and 
sisters.  One  requirement  of  her  home  was  rigid: 
all  money  earned  by  a child  must  be  paid  into 
the  family  income  until  “legal  age”  was  attained. 
The  slightly  neurotic,  very  pretty  girl  of  seventeen 
heartily  detested  the  dish-washing  in  a restaurant, 
which  constituted  her  first  place  in  America,  and 
quite  honestly  declared  that  the  heavy  lifting 
was  beyond  her  strength.  Such  insubordination 
was  not  tolerated  at  home,  and  every  Saturday 
night  when  her  meager  wages,  reduced  by  sick 
days  “off,”  were  compared  with  what  the  others 


162 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


brought  in,  she  was  regularly  scolded,  “some- 
times slapped,”  by  her  parents,  jeered  at  by  her 
more  vigorous  sisters  and  bullied  by  her  brothers. 
She  tried  to  shorten  her  hours  by  doing  “rush- 
work”  as  a waitress  at  noon,  but  she  found  this 
still  beyond  her  strength,  and  worst  of  all,  the 
pay  of  two  dollars  and  a half  insufficient  to  satisfy 
her  mother.  Confiding  her  troubles  to  the  other 
waitresses,  one  of  them  good-naturedly  told  her 
how  she  could  make  money  through  appoint- 
ments in  a nearby  disreputable  hotel,  and  so 
take  home  an  increased  amount  of  money  easily 
called  “a  raise  in  wages.”  So  strong  was  the 
habit  of  obedience,  that  the  girl  continued  to 
take  money  home  every  Saturday  night  until 
her  eighteenth  birthday,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
she  gave  up  the  restaurant  in  less  than  six  weeks 
after  her  first  experience.  Although  all  of  this 
happened  ten  years  ago  and  the  German  _aother 
is  long  since  dead,  the  daughter  bitterly  ended 
the  story  with  the  infamous  hope  that  “the  old 
lady  was  now  suffering  the  torments  of  the  lost, 
for  making  me  what  I am.”  Such  a girl  was 
subjected  to  temptations  to  which  society  has 
no  right  to  expose  her. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


163 


A dangerous  cynicism  regarding  the  value 
of  virtue,  a cynicism  never  so  unlovely  as  in 
the  young,  sometimes  seizes  a girl  who,  because 
of  long  hours  and  overwork,  has  been  unable 
to  preserve  either  her  health  or  spirits  and 
has  lost  all  measure  of  joy  in  life.  That  this 
premature  cynicism  may  be  traced  to  an  un- 
happy and  narrow  childhood  is  suggested  by 
the  fact  that  a large  number  of  these  girls  come 
from  families  in  which  there  has  been  little 
affection  and  the  poor  substitute  of  parental 
tyranny. 

A young  Italian  girl  who  earned  four  dollars 
a week  in  a tailor  shop  pulling  out  bastings, 
when  asked  why  she  wore  a heavy  woolen  gown 
on  one  of  the  hottest  days  of  last  summer,  re- 
plied that  she  was  obliged  to  earn  money  for  her 
clothes  by  scrubbing  for  the  neighbors  after 
hours;  that  she  had  found  no  such  work  lately 
and  that  her  father  would  not  allow  her  anything 
from  her  wages  for  clothes  or  for  carfare,  because 
he  was  buying  a house. 

This  parental  control  sometimes  exercised  in 
order  to  secure  all  of  a daughter’s  wages,  is  often 
established  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world. 


164 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


I recall  a French  dressmaker  who  had  frugally 
supported  her  two  daughters  until  they  were  of 
working  age,  when  she  quite  naturally  expected 
them  to  conform  to  the  careful  habits  of  living 
necessary  during  her  narrow  years.  In  order  to 
save  carfare,  she  required  her  daughters  to  walk  a 
long  distance  to  the  department  store  in  which 
one  was  a bundle  wrapper  and  the  other  a clerk 
at  the  ribbon  counter.  They  dressed  in  black  as 
being  the  most  economical  color  and  a penny 
spent  in  pleasure  was  never  permitted.  One 
day  a young  man  who  was  buying  ribbon  from 
the  older  girl  gave  her  a yard  with  the  remark 
that  she  was  much  too  yoimg  and  pretty  to  be 
so  somberly  dressed.  She  wore  the  ribbon  at 
work,  never  of  course  at  home,  but  it  opened  a 
vista  of  delightful  possibilities  and  she  eagerly 
accepted  a pair  of  gloves  the  following  week 
from  the  same  young  man,  who  afterguards  asked 
her  to  dine  with  him.  This  was  the  beginning  of 
a winter  of  surreptitious  pleasures  on  the  part 
of  the  two  sisters.  They  were  shrewd  enough 
never  to  be  out  later  than  ten  o’clock  and  always 
brought  home  so-called  overtime  pay  to  their 
mother.  In  the  spring  the  older  girl,  finding 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


165 


herself  worn  out  by  her  dissipation  and  having 
resolved  to  cut  loose  from  her  home,  came  to  the 
office  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association 
to  ask  help  for  her  younger  sister.  It  was  dis- 
covered that  the  mother  was  totally  ignorant  of 
the  semi-professional  life  her  daughters  had  been 
leading.  She  reiterated  over  and  over  again 
that  she  had  always  guarded  them  carefully 
and  had  given  them  no  money  to  spend.  It 
took  months  of  constant  visiting  on  the  part  of 
a representative  of  the  Association  before  she 
was  finally  persuaded  to  treat  the  younger  girl 
more  generously. 

While  this  family  is  fairly  typical  of  those 
in  which  over-restraint  is  due  to  the  lack  of 
understanding,  it  is  true  that  in  most  cases  the 
family  tyranny  is  exercised  by  an  old-country 
father  in  an  honest  attempt  to  guard  his 
daughter  against  the  dangers  of  a new  world. 
The  worst  instances,  however,  are  those  in  which 
the  father  has  fallen  into  the  evil  ways  of  drink, 
and  not  only  demands  all  of  his  daughter’s  wages, 
but  treats  her  with  great  brutality  when  those 
wages  fall  below  his  expectations.  Many  such 
daughters  have  come  to  grief  because  they  have 


166  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

been  afraid  to  go  home  at  night  when  their  wage 
envelopes  contained  less  than  usual,  either  be- 
cause a new  system  of  piece  w'ork  had  reduced 
the  amount  or  because,  in  a moment  of  weakness, 
they  had  taken  out  five  cents  with  which  to 
attend  a show,  or  ten  cents  for  the  much-desired 
pleasure  of  riding  back  and  forth  the  full  length 
of  an  elevated  railroad,  or  because  they  had  in 
a thirsty  moment  taken  out  a nickel  for  a drink 
of  soda  water,  or  worst  of  all,  had  fallen  a victim 
to  the  installment  plan  of  buying  a new  hat  or 
a pair  of  shoes.  These  girls,  m their  fear  of 
beatings  and  scoldings,  although  they  are  sure 
of  shelter  and  food  and  often  have  a mother  who 
is  trying  to  protect  them  from  domestic  storms, 
have  almost  no  money  for  clothing,  and  are 
inevitably  subject  to  moments  of  sheer  revolt, 
their  rebellion  intensified  by  the  fact  that  after 
a girl  earns  her  ovm  money  and  is  accustomed  to 
come  and  go  upon  the  streets  as  an  independent 
wage  earner,  she  finds  unsjunpathetic  control 
much  harder  to  bear  than  do  schoolgirls  of  the 
same  age  who  have  never  broken  the  habits  of 
their  childhood  and  are  still  economically  de- 
pendent upon  their  parents. 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


167 


In  spite  of  the  fact  that  domestic  service  is 
alwu.ys  suggested  by  the  average  woman  as  an 
alternative  for  the  working  girl  whose  life  is 
beset  with  danger,  the  federal  report  on  “Women 
and  Child  Wage  Earners  in  the  United  States” 
gives  the  occupation  of  the  majority  of  girls  who 
go  wrong  as  that  of  domestic  service,  and  in  this 
it  confirms  the  experience  of  every  matron  in  a 
rescue  home  and  the  statistics  in  the  maternity 
wards  of  the  public  hospitals.  The  report  sug- 
gests that  the  danger  comes  from  the  general 
conditions  of  work:  “These  general  conditions 
are  the  loneliness  of  the  life,  the  lack  of  opportuni- 
ties for  making  friends  and  securing  recreation 
and  amusement  in  safe  surroundings,  the  monoto- 
nous and  uninteresting  nature  of  the  work  done 
as  these  untrained  girls  do  it,  the  lack  of  external 
stimulus  to  pride  and  self-respect,  and  the  abso- 
lutely unguarded  state  of  the  girl,  except  when 
directly  under  the  eye  of  her  mistress.” 

In  addition  to  these  reasons,  the  girls  realize 
that  the  opportunities  for  marriage  are  less  in 
domestic  service  than  in  other  occupations,  and 
after  all,  the  great  business  of  youth  is  securing 
a mate,  as  the  young  instinctively  understand. 


168 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Unlike  the  working  girl  who  lives  at  home  and 
constantly  meets  young  men  of  her  own  neighbor- 
hood and  factory  life,  the  girl  in  domestic  service 
is  brought  into  contact  with  very  few  possible 
lovers.  Even  the  men  of  her  former  acquaint- 
ance, however  slightly  Americanized,  do  not 
like  to  call  on  a girl  in  someone  else’s  kitchen, 
and  find  the  entire  situation  embarrassing.  The 
girl’s  mistress  knows  that  for  her  own  daughters 
mutual  interests  and  recreation  are  the  natural 
foundations  for  friendship  with  young  men, 
which  may  or  may  not  lead  to  marriage,  but 
which  is  the  prerogative  of  every  young  girl. 
The  mistress  does  not,  however,  apply  this 
worldly  wisdom  to  the  maid  in  her  service,  only 
eighteen  or  nineteen  years  old,  utterly  dependent 
upon  her  for  social  life  save  during  one  afternoon 
and  evening  a week. 

The  majority  of  domestics  are  employed  in 
families  where  there  is  only  one,  and  the  tired 
and  dispirited  girl,  often  without  a taste  for 
reading,  spends  many  lonelj'^  hours.  That  most 
fundamental  and  powerful  of  all  instincts  has 
therefore  no  chance  for  diffusion  or  social  expres- 
sion and  like  all  confined  forces,  tends  to  degen- 


'AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


169 


erate.  The  girl  is  equipped  with  no  weapon  with 
which  to  contend  with  those  poisonous  images 
which  arise  from  the  senses,  and  these  images, 
bred  of  fatigue  and  loneliness,  make  a girl  an 
easy  victim.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  colored 
girl,  who  because  of  her  traditions,  is  often 
treated  with  so  little  respect  by  white  men,  that 
she  is  constantly  subjected  to  insult.  Even  the 
colored  servants  in  the  New  York  apartment 
houses,  who  live  at  home  and  thus  avoid  this 
loneliness,  because  their  hours  extend  until  nine 
in  the  evening,  are  obliged  to  seek  their  pleasures 
late  into  the  night.  American  cities  offer  occu- 
pation to  more  colored  women  than  colored  men 
and  this  surplus  of  women,  in  some  cities  as 
large  as  one  hundred  and  thirty  or  forty  women 
to  one  hundred  men,  affords  an  opportunity  to 
the  procurer  which  he  quickly  seizes.  He  is 
often  in  league  with  certain  employment  bureaus, 
who  make  a business  of  advancing  the  railroad 
or  boat  fare  to  colored  girls  coming  from  the 
South  to  enter  into  domestic  service.  The  girl, 
in  debt  and  unused  to  the  city,  is  often  put  into  a 
questionable  house  and  kept  there  until  her 
debt  is  paid  many  times  over.  In  some  respects 


170 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


her  position  is  not  unlike  that  of  the  imported 
white  slave,  for  although  she  has  the  inestimable 
advantage  of  speaking  the  language,  she  finds 
it  even  more  difficult  to  have  her  story  cred- 
ited. This  contemptuous  attitude  places  her 
at  a disadvantage,  for  so  universally  are 
colored  girls  in  domestic  service  suspected  of 
blackmail  that  the  average  court  is  slow  to 
credit  their  testimony  when  it  is  given  against 
white  men.  The  field  of  emploj'^raent  for  colored 
girls  is  extremely  limited.  They  are  seldom 
found  in  factories  and  workshops.  They  are 
not  wanted  in  department  stores  nor  even  as 
waitresses  in  hotels.  The  majority  of  them 
therefore  are  engaged  in  domestic  service  and 
often  find  the  position  of  maid  in  a house  of 
prostitution  or  of  chambermaid  in  a disreput- 
able hotel,  the  best-paying  position  open  to  them. 

When  a girl  who  has  been  in  domestic  service 
loses  her  health,  or  for  any  other  reason  is  unable 
to  carry  on  her  occupation,  she  is  often  curiously 
detached  and  isolated,  because  she  has  had  so 
little  opportunity  for  normal  social  relationships 
and  friendships.  One  of  the  saddest  cases  ever 
brought  to  my  personal  knowledge  was  that  of 


'AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


171 


an  orphan  Norwegian  girl  who,  coming  to 
America  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  had  been  for 
three  years  in  one  position  as  general  housemaid, 
during  which  time  she  had  drawn  only  such  part 
of  her  wages  as  was  necessary  for  her  simple 
clothing.  At  the  end  of  three  years,  when  she 
was  sent  to  a public  hospital  with  nervous  prostra- 
tion, her  employer  refused  to  pay  her  accumulated 
wages,  on  the  ground  that  owing  to  her  ill  health 
she  had  been  of  little  use  during  the  last  year. 
When  she  left  the  hospital,  practically  penniless, 
advised  by  the  physician  to  find  some  outdoor 
work,  she  sold  a patented  egg-beater  for  six 
months,  scarcely  earning  enough  for  her  barest 
necessities  and  in  constant  dread  lest  she  could 
not  "keep  respectable.”  Wlien  she  was  found 
wandering  upon  the  street  she  not  only  had  no 
capital  with  which  to  renew  her  stock,  but  had 
been  without  food  for  two  days  and  had  resolved 
to  drown  herself.  Every  effort  was  made  to 
restore  the  half-crazed  girl,  but  unfortunately 
hospital  restraint  was  not  considered  necessary, 
and  a month  later,  in  spite  of  the  vigilance  of 
her  new  employer,  her  body  was  taken  from  the 
lake.  One  more  of  those  gentle  spirits  who  had 


172 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


found  the  problem  of  life  insoluble,  had  sought 
refuge  in  death. 

A surprising  number  of  suicides  occm'  among 
girls  who  have  been  in  domestic  service,  when  they 
discover  that  they  have  been  betrayed  by  their 
lovers.  Perhaps  nothing  is  more  astonishing 
than  the  attitude  of  the  mistress  when  the  situa- 
tion of  such  a forlorn  girl  is  discovered,  and  it 
would  be  interesting  to  know  how  far  this  attitude 
has  influenced  these  girls  either  to  suicide  or  to 
their  reckless  choice  of  a disreputable  life,  which 
statistics  show  so  many  of  their  number  have 
elected.  The  mistress  almost  invariably  promptly 
dismisses  such  a girl,  assuring  her  that  she  is 
disgraced  forever  and  too  polluted  to  remain 
for  another  hour  in  a good  home.  In  full  com- 
mand of  the  situation,  she  usually  succeeds  in 
convincing  the  wretched  girl  that  she  is  ir- 
reparably ruined.  Her  very  phraseology',  al- 
though unknow'n  to  herself,  is  a remnant  of  that 
earlier  historic  period  when  every  woman  was 
obliged  in  her  own  person  to  protect  her  home 
and  to  secure  the  status  of  her  children.  The 
mdignant  woman  is  try-ing  to  exercise  alone  that 
social  restraint  which  should  have  been  exercised 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


173 


by  the  community  and  which  would  have  natu- 
rally protected  the  girl,  if  she  had  not  been  so 
withdrawn  from  it,  in  order  to  serve  exclusively 
the  interests  of  her  mistress’s  family.  Such  a 
woman  seldom  follows  the  ruined  girl  through 
the  dreary  weeks  after  her  dismissal;  her  difficulty 
in  finding  any  sort  of  work,  the  ostracism  of  her 
former  friends  added  to  her  own  self-accusation, 
the  poverty  and  loneliness,  the  final  ten  days  in 
the  hospital,  and  the  great  temptation  which 
comes  after  that,  to  give  away  her  child.  The 
baby  farmer  who  haunts  the  public  hospitals  for 
such  cases  tells  her  that  upon  the  payment  of 
forty  or  fifty  dollars,  he  will  take  care  of  the 
child  for  a year  and  that  “maybe  it  won’t  live 
any  longer  than  that,”  and  unless  the  hospital 
is  equipped  with  a social  service  department, 
such  as  the  one  at  the  Massachusetts  General, 
the  girl  leaves  it  weak  and  low-spirited  and  too 
broken  to  care  what  becomes  of  her.  It  is  in 
moments  such  as  these  that  many  a poor  girl, 
convinced  that  all  the  world  is  against  her,  decides 
to  enter  a disreputable  house.  Here  at  least 
she  will  find  food  and  shelter,  she  will  not  be 
despised  by  the  other  inmates  and  she  can  earn 


174  'A  NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

money  for  the  support  of  her  child.  Often  she 
has  received  the  address  of  such  a house  from  one 
of  her  companions  in  the  maternity  ward  where, 
among  the  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  unmarried  moth- 
ers, at  least  two  or  three  sophisticated  girls  are 
always  to  be  foimd,  eager  to  “put  wise”  the  girls 
who  are  merely  unfortunate.  Occasionally  a girl 
who  follows  such  baneful  advice  still  insists  upon 
keeping  her  child.  I recall  a pathetic  case  in 
the  juvenile  court  of  Chicago  when  such  a 
mother  of  a five-year-old  child  was  pronounced 
by  the  judge  to  be  an  “improper  guardian.” 
The  agonized  woman  was  told  that  she  might 
retain  her  child  if  she  would  completely  change 
her  way  of  life;  but  she  insisted  that  such  a 
requirement  was  impossible,  that  she  had  no 
other  means  of  earning  her  living,  and  that  she 
had  become  too  idle  and  broken  for  regular  work. 
The  child  clung  piteously  to  the  mother,  and, 
having  gathered  from  the  evidence  that  she  was 
considered  “bad,”  assured  the  judge  over  and 
over  again  that  she  was  “the  bestest  mother  in 
the  world.”  The  poor  mother,  who  had  begun 
her  wretched  mode  of  life  for  her  child’s  sake, 
found  herself  so  demoralized  by  her  hideous 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


175 


experiences  that  she  could  not  leave  the  life, 
even  for  the  sake  of  the  same  child,  still  her  most 
precious  possession.  Only  six  years  before,  this 
mother  had  been  an  honest  girl  cheerfully  working 
in  the  household  of  a good  woman,  whose  sense 
of  duty  had  expressed  itself  in  dismissing  “the 
outcast.” 

These  discouraged  girls,  who  so  often  come  from 
domestic  service  to  supply  the  vice  demands  of 
the  city,  are  really  the  last  representatives  of 
those  thousands  of  betrayed  girls  who  for  many 
years  met  the  entire  demand  of  the  trade;  for, 
while  a procurer  of  some  sort  has  performed  his 
ofl&ce  for  centuries,  only  in  the  last  fifty  years 
has  the  white  slave  market  required  the  services 
of  extended  business  enterprises  in  order  to  keep 
up  the  supply.  Previously  the  demand  had  been 
largely  met  by  the  girls  who  had  voluntarily 
entered  a disreputable  life  because  they  had 
been  betrayed.  While  the  white  slave  traflfic  was 
organized  primarily  for  profit  it  could  of  course 
never  have  flourished  unless  there  had  been  a 
dearth  of  these  discouraged  girls.  Is  it  not  also 
significant  that  the  surviving  representatives  of 
the  girls  who  formerly  supplied  the  demand  are 


176 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


drawn  most  largely  from  the  one  occupation  which 
is  farthest  from  the  modern  ideal  of  social  freedom 
and  self-direction  ? Domestic  service  represents, 
in  the  modern  world,  more  nearly  than  any  other 
of  the  gainful  occupations  open  to  women,  the 
ancient  labor  conditions  under  which  woman’s 
standard  of  chastity  was  developed  and  for  so 
long  maintained.  It  would  seem  obvious  that 
both  the  girl  over-restrained  at  home,  as  well  as 
the  girl  in  domestic  service,  had  been  too  much 
withdrawn  from  the  healthy  influence  of  pubhc 
opinion,  and  it  is  at  least  significant  that  domestic 
control  has  so  broken  down  that  the  girls  most 
completely  imder  its  rule  are  shown  to  be  those 
in  the  greatest  danger.  Such  a statement  un- 
doubtedly needs  the  modification  that  the  girls 
in  domestic  service  are  frequently  those  who  are 
unadapted  to  skilled  labor  and  are  least  capable 
of  taking  care  of  themselves,  yet  the  fact  remains 
that  they  are  belated  morally  as  well  as  industri- 
ally. As  they  have  missed  the  industrial  disci- 
pline that  comes  from  regular  hours  of  systema- 
tized work,  so  they  have  missed  the  moral 
training  of  group  solidarity,  the  ideals  and  re- 
straints which  the  friendships  and  companionships 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


177 


of  other  working  girls  would  have  brought  them. 

When  the  judgment  of  her  peers  becomes  not 
less  firm  but  more  kindly,  the  self-supporting 
girl  will  have  a safeguard  and  restraint  many 
times  more  effective  than  the  individual  control 
which  has  become  so  inadequate,  or  the  family 
discipline  that,  with  the  best  intentions  in  the 
world,  cannot  cope  with  existing  social  conditions. 

The  most  perplexing  case  that  comes  before 
the  philanthropic  organizations  trying  to  aid 
and  rescue  the  victims  of  the  white  slave  traffic, 
is  of  the  type  which  involves  a girl  who  has  been 
secured  by  the  trafficker  when  so  lonely,  detached 
and  discouraged  that  she  greedily  seized  what- 
ever friendship  was  offered  her.  Such  a girl 
has  been  so  eager  for  affection  that  she  clings  to 
even  the  wretched  simulacrum  of  it,  afforded  by 
the  man  who  calls  himself  her  “protector,” 
and  she  can  only  be  permanently  detached  from 
the  life  to  which  he  holds  her,  when  she  is  put 
under  the  influence  of  more  genuine  affections 
and  interests.  That  is  doubtless  one  reason  it 
is  always  more  possible  to  help  the  girl  who  has 
become  the  mother  of  a child.  Although  she  un- 
justly faces  a public  opinion  much  more  severe 


178 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE 


than  that  encountered  by  the  childless  woman 
who  also  endeavors  to  “reform,”  the  mother’s 
sheer  affection  and  maternal  absorption  enables 
her  to  overcome  the  greater  diflBculties  more 
easily  than  the  other  woman,  without  the  new 
warmth  of  motive,  overcomes  the  lesser  ones. 
The  Salvation  Army  in  their  rescue  homes  have 
long  recognized  this  need  for  an  absorbing  interest, 
which  should  involve  the  Magdalen’s  deepest 
affections  and  emotions,  and  therefore  often 
utilize  the  rescued  girl  to  save  others. 

Certainly  no  philanthropic  association,  how- 
ever rationalistic  and  suspicious  of  emotional 
appeal,  can  hope  to  help  a girl  once  overwhelmed 
by  desperate  temptation,  unless  it  is  able  to  pull 
her  back  into  the  stream  of  kindly  human  fellow- 
ship and  into  a life  involving  normal  human 
relations.  Such  an  association  must  needs  re- 
member those  wise  words  of  Coimt  Tolstoy: 
“We  constantly  think  that  there  are  circum- 
stances in  which  a human  being  can  be  treated 
without  affection,  and  there  are  no  such  cir- 
cumstances.” 


INCREASED  SOCIAL  CONTROL 


! 


I 


CHAPTER  VI 


INCREASED  SOCIAL  CONTROL 

When  certain  groups  in  a community,  to  whom 
a social  wrong  has  become  intolerable,  prepare 
for  definite  action  against  it,  they  almost  invari- 
ably discover  unexpected  help  from  contempo- 
raneous social  movements  with  which  they  later 
find  themselves  allied.  The  most  immediate 
help  in  this  new  campaign  against  the  social 
evil  will  probably  come  thus  indirectly  from 
those  streams  of  humanitarian  effort  which 
are  ever  widening  and  which  will  in  time  slowly 
engulf  into  their  rising  tide  of  enthusiasm  for 
human  betterment,  even  the  victims  of  the  white 
slave  trafl&c. 

Foremost  among  them  is  the  world-wide  move- 
ment to  preserve  and  prolong  the  term  of  human 
life,  coupled  with  the  determination  on  the  part 
of  the  medical  profession  to  eliminate  all  forms 
of  germ  diseases.  The  same  physicians  and 
sanitarians  who  have  practically  rid  the  modern 


182 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


city  of  small-pox  and  cholera  and  are  eliminating 
tuberculosis,  well  know  that  the  social  evil  is 
directly  responsible  for  germ  diseases  more  preva- 
lent than  any  of  the  others,  and  also  communi- 
cable. Over  and  over  again  in  the  history  of 
large  cities,  Vienna,  Paris,  St.  Louis,  the  medi- 
cal profession  has  been  urged  to  control  the 
diseases  resulting  from  the  commercialized  vice 
which  the  municipal  authorities  themselves  per- 
mitted. But  the  experiments  in  segregation,  in 
licensed  systems,  and  certification  have  not 
been  considered  successful.  The  medical  profes- 
sion, hitherto  divided  in  opinion  as  to  the  feasi- 
bility of  such  undertakings,  is  virtually  united 
in  the  conclusion  that  so  long  as  commercial- 
ized vice  exists,  physicians  cannot  guarantee 
a city  against  the  spread  of  the  contagious  poison 
generated  by  it,  which  is  fatal  alike  to  the  individ- 
ual and  to  his  offspring.  The  medical  profession 
agrees  that,  as  the  victims  of  the  social  evil 
inevitably  become  the  purveyors  of  germ  diseases 
of  a very  persistent  and  incurable  type,  safety 
in  this  regard  lies  only  in  the  extinction  of  com- 
mercialized vice.  They  point  out  the  indirect 
ways  in  which  this  contagion  can  spread  exactly 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


183 


as  any  other  can,  but  insist  that  its  control  is 
enormously  complicated  by  the  fact  that  the 
victims  of  these  diseases  are  most  imwilling  to 
be  designated  and  quarantined.  The  medical 
profession  is  at  last  taking  the  position  that 
the  commimity  wishing  to  protect  itself  against 
this  contagion  will  in  the  end  be  driven  to  the 
extermination  of  the  very  source  itself.  A well- 
known  authority  states  the  one  breeding-place 
of  these  disease  germs,  without  exception,  is  the 
social  institution  designated  as  prostitution, 
but,  once  bred  and  cultivated  there,  they  then 
spread  through  the  community,  attacking  alike 
both  the  innocent  and  the  guilty. 

We  can  imagine,  after  a dozen  years  of  vigorous 
and  able  propaganda  of  this  opinion  on  the  part 
of  public-spirited  physicians  and  sanitarians, 
that  a city  might  well  appeal  to  the  medical 
profession  to  exterminate  prostitution  on  the 
very  ground  that  it  is  a source  of  constant  dan- 
ger to  the  health  and  future  of  the  commimity. 
Such  a city  might  readily  give  to  the  board  or 
health  ordered  to  undertake  this  extermination 
more  absolute  authority  than  is  now  accorded 
to  it  in  a small-pox  epidemic.  Of  course,  no 


184  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

city  could  reach  such  a view  unless  the  education 
of  the  public  proceeded  much  more  rapidly  than 
at  present,  although  the  newly-established  custom 
of  careful  medical  examination  of  school-children 
and  of  employees  in  factories  and  commercial 
establishments  must  result  in  the  discovery  of 
many  such  cases,  and  in  the  end  adequate  provi- 
sion must  be  made  for  their  isolation.  A child 
was  recently  discovered  in  a Chicago  school  with 
an  open  sore  upon  her  lip,  which  made  her  a 
most  dangerous  source  of  infection.  She  was  just 
fourteen  years  of  age,  too  old  to  be  admitted 
into  that  most  pathetic  and  most  vmlovely  of 
all  children’s  wards,  where  children  must  suffer 
for  “the  sins  of  their  fathers,”  and  too  young 
and  innocent  to  be  put  into  the  women’s  ward  in 
which  the  public  takes  care  of  those  wrecks  of 
dissolute  living  who  are  no  longer  valuable  to 
the  commerce  which  once  secured  them,  and 
have  become  merely  worthless  stock  which  pays 
no  dividend.  The  disease  of  the  little  girl  was 
in  too  virulent  a stage  to  admit  her  to  that 
convalescent  home  lately  established  in  Chicago 
for  those  infected  children  who  are  dismissed 
from  the  county  hospital,  but  whom  it  is  impos- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


185 


sible  to  return  to  their  old  surroundings.  A 
philanthropic  association  was  finally  obliged  to 
pay  her  board  for  weeks  to  a woman  who  care- 
fully followed  instructions  as  to  her  treatment. 
This  is  but  one  example  of  a child  who  was  dis- 
covered and  provided  for,  but  it  is  evident  that 
the  public  cannot  long  remain  indifferent  to  the 
care  of  such  cases  when  it  has  already  established 
the  means  for  detecting  them.  In  twenty-seven 
months  over  six  hundred  children  passed  through 
this  most  piteous  children’s  ward  in  Chicago’s 
public  hospital.  All  but  twenty-nine  of  these 
children  were  under  ten  years  of  age,  and  doubt- 
less a number  of  them  had  been  victims  of  that 
wretched  tradition  that  a man  afflicted  with 
this  incurable  disease  might  cure  himself  at  the 
expense  of  innocence. 

Crusades  against  other  infectious  diseases, 
such  as  small-pox  and  cholera,  imply  well-con- 
sidered sanitary  precautions,  dependent  upon 
widespread  education  and  an  aroused  public 
opinion.  To  establish  such  education  and  to 
arouse  the  public  in  regard  to  this  present  men- 
ace apparently  presents  insuperable  difficulties. 
Many  newspapers,  so  ready  to  deal  with  all 


186 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


other  forms  of  vice  and  misery,  never  allow 
these  evils  to  be  mentioned  in  their  columns 
except  in  the  advertisements  of  quack  remedies; 
the  clergy,  unlike  the  founder  of  the  Christian 
religion  and  the  early  apostles,  seldom  preach 
against  the  sin  of  which  these  contagions  are  an 
inevitable  consequence:  the  physicians,  bound 
by  a rigorous  medical  etiquette,  tell  nothing  of 
the  prevalence  of  these  maladies,  use  a confusing 
nomenclature  in  the  hospitals,  and  write  only 
contributory  causes  upon  the  very  death  certi- 
ficates of  the  victims. 

Yet  it  is  easy  to  predict  that  a society  com- 
mitted to  the  abolition  of  infectious  germs,  to  a 
higher  degree  of  public  health,  and  to  a better 
standard  of  sanitation  will  not  forever  permit 
these  highly  communicable  diseases  to  spread 
unchecked  in  its  midst,  and  that  a public,  con- 
vmced  that  sanitary  science,  property  supported, 
might  rid  our  cities  of  this  type  of  disease,  ■«’ill 
at  length  insist  upon  its  accomplishment.  When 
we  consider  the  manj'^  things  imdertaken  in  the 
name  of  health  and  sanitation  it  becomes  easy 
to  make  the  prediction,  for  public  health  is  a 
magic  word  which  ever  grows  more  potent,  as 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


187 


society  realizes  that  the  very  existence  of  the 
modern  city  would  be  an  impossibility  had  it 
not  been  discovered  that  the  health  of  the  individ- 
ual is  largely  controlled  by  the  hygienic  condition 
of  his  surroundings.  Since  the  first  commission 
to  inquire  into  the  conditions  of  great  cities  was 
appointed  in  Manchester  in  1844,  sanitary  sci- 
ence, both  in  knowledge  and  municipal  authority, 
has  progressed  until  advocates  of  the  most  ad- 
vanced measures  in  city  hygiene  and  preventive 
sanitary  science  boldly  state  that  neglected  child- 
hood and  neglected  disease  are  the  most  potent 
causes  of  social  insufficiency. 

Certainly  a plea  could  be  made  for  the  women 
and  children  who  are  often  the  innocent  victims 
of  these  diseases.  Quite  recently  in  Chicago 
there  was  brought  to  my  attention  the  incredibly 
pathetic  plight  of  a widow  with  four  children 
who  was  in  such  constant  fear  of  spreading  the 
infection  for  which  her  husband  had  been  re- 
sponsible, that  she  touchingly  offered  to  leave 
her  children  forevermore,  if  there  was  no  other 
way  to  save  them  from  the  horrible  suffering 
she  herself  was  enduring.  In  spite  of  thousands 
of  such  cases  Utah  is  the  pioneer  and  only  state 


188 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


with  a law  which  requires  that  this  infection  shall 
be  reported  and  controlled,  as  are  other  contagious 
maladies,  and  which  also  authorizes  boards  of 
health  to  take  adequate  measures  in  order  to 
secure  protection. 

Another  humanitarian  movement  from  which 
assistance  will  doubtless  come  to  the  crusade 
against  the  social  evil,  is  the  great  movement 
against  alcoholism  with  its  recent  revival  in 
every  civilized  country  of  the  world.  A careful 
scientist  has  called  alcohol  the  indispensable 
vehicle  of  the  business  transacted  by  the  w’hite 
slave  traders,  and  has  asserted  that  without  its 
use  this  trade  could  not  long  continue.  Whoever 
has  tried  to  help  a girl  making  an  effort  to  leave 
the  irregular  life  she  has  been  leading,  must  have 
been  discouraged  by  the  victim’s  attempts  to 
overcome  the  habit  of  using  alcohol  and  drugs. 
Such  a girl  has  commonly  been  drawn  into  the 
life  in  the  first  place  w-^hen  under  the  influence  of 
liquor  and  has  continued  to  drink  that  she  might 
be  able  to  live  through  each  day.  Furthermore, 
the  drinking  habit  grow’^s  upon  her  because  she 
is  constantly  required  to  sell  liquor  and  to  be 
“treated.” 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


189 


It  is  estimated  that  the  liquor  sold  by  such 
girls  nets  a profit  to  the  trade  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  per  cent,  over  and  above  the  girl’s  own 
commission.  Chicago  made  at  least  one  honest 
effort  to  divorce  the  sale  of  liquor  from  prostitu- 
tion, when  the  superintendent  of  police  last  year 
ruled  that  no  liquor  should  be  sold  in  any  dis- 
reputable house.  The  difficulty  of  enforcing 
such  an  order  is  greatly  increased  because  such 
houses,  as  well  as  the  questionable  dance  halls, 
commonly  obtain  a special  permit  to  sell 
liquor  under  a federal  license,  which  is  not  only 
cheaper  than  the  saloon  license  obtained  from  the 
city,  but  has  the  added  advantage  to  the  holder 
that  he  can  sell  after  one  o’clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, at  which  time  the  city  closes  all  saloons. 

The  aggregate  annual  profit  of  the  two  hundred 
and  thirty-six  disorderly  saloons  recently  investi- 
gated in  Chicago  by  the  Vice  Commission  was 
84,307,000.  This  profit  on  the  sale  of  liquor 
can  be  traced  all  along  the  line  in  connection 
with  the  white  slave  traffic  and  is  no  less  dis- 
astrous from  the  point  of  view  of  young  men  than 
of  the  girls.  Even  a slight  exhilaration  from 
alcohol  relaxes  the  moral  sense  and  throws  a 


190  ^ new  conscience  and 

sentimental  or  adventurous  glamor  over  an 
aspect  of  life  from  which  a decent  young  man 
would  ordinarily  recoil,  and  its  continued  use 
stimulates  the  senses  at  the  very  moment  when 
the  intellectual  and  moral  inhibitions  are  lessened. 
May  we  not  conclude  that  both  chastity  and 
self-restraint  are  more  firmly  established  in  the 
modern  city  than  we  realize,  when  the  white 
slave  traders  find  it  necessary  both  forcibly  to 
detain  their  victims  and  to  ply  young  men  with 
alcohol  that  they  may  profit  thereby?  General 
Bingham,  who  as  Police  Commissioner  of  New 
York  certainly  knew  whereof  he  spoke,  says: 
“There  is  not  enough  depravity  in  human  nature 
to  keep  alive  this  very  large  business.  The 
immorality  of  women  and  the  brutishness  of  men 
have  to  be  persuaded,  coaxed  and  constantly 
stimulated  in  order  to  keep  the  social  evil  in 
its  present  state  of  business  prosperity.” 

We  may  soberly  hope  that  some  of  the  experi- 
ments made  by  governmental  and  municipal  au- 
thorities to  control  and  regulate  the  sale  of  liquor 
will  at  last  meet  with  such  a measure  of  success 
that  the  existence  of  public  prostitution,  deprived 
of  its  artificial  stimulus  of  alcohol,  will  in  the  end 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


191 


be  imperilled.  The  Chicago  Vice  Commission 
has  made  a series  of  valuable  suggestions  for  the 
regulation  of  saloons  and  for  the  separation  of 
the  sale  of  liquor  from  dance  halls  and  from  all 
other  places  known  as  recruiting  grounds  for 
the  white  slave  traffic.  There  is  still  need  for 
a much  wider  and  more  thorough  education  of 
the  public  in  regard  to  the  historic  connection 
between  commercialized  vice  and  alcoholism, 
of  the  close  relation  between  politics  and  the 
liquor  interests,  behind  which  the  social  evil  so 
often  entrenches  itself. 

In  addition  to  the  movements  against  germ 
diseases  and  the  suppression  of  alcoholism,  both 
of  which  are  mitigating  the  hard  fate  of  the  vic- 
tims of  the  white  slave  traffic,  other  public  move- 
ments mysteriously  affecting  all  parts  of  the  social 
order  will  in  time  threaten  the  very  existence  of 
commercialized  vice.  First  among  these,  per- 
haps, is  the  equal  suffrage  movement.  On  the 
horizon  everywhere  are  signs  that  woman  will 
soon  receive  the  right  to  exercise  political  power, 
and  it  is  believed  that  she  will  show  her  efficiency 
most  conspicuously  in  finding  means  for  en- 
hancing and  preserving  human  life,  if  only  as 


192 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


the  result  of  her  age-long  experiences.  That 
primitive  maternal  instinct,  which  has  always 
been  as  ready  to  defend  as  it  has  been  to  nurture, 
will  doubtless  promptly  grapple  with  certain 
crimes  connected  with  the  white  slave  traffic; 
women  with  political  power  would  not  brook 
that  men  should  live  upon  the  wages  of  captured 
victims,  should  openly  hire  youths  to  ruin  and 
debase  young  girls,  should  be  permitted  to  trans- 
mit poison  to  unborn  children.  Life  is  full  of 
hidden  remedial  powers  which  society  has  not 
yet  utilized,  but  perhaps  nowhere  is  the  waste 
more  flagrant  than  in  the  matured  deductions 
and  judgments  of  the  women,  who  are  constantly 
forced  to  share  the  social  injustices  which  they 
have  no  recognized  power  to  alter.  If  political 
rights  were  once  given  to  women,  if  the  situation 
were  theirs  to  deal  with  as  a matter  of  civic 
responsibility,  one  cannot  imagine  that  the  exist- 
ence of  the  social  evil  would  remain  unchal- 
lenged in  its  semi-legal  protection.  Those  women 
who  are  already  possessed  of  political  power  have 
in  many  ways  registered  their  conscience  in 
regard  to  it.  The  Norwegian  women,  for  instance, 
have  guaranteed  to  every  illegitimate  child  the 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


193 


right  of  inheritance  to  its  father’s  name  and 
property  by  a law  which  also  provides  for  the 
care  of  its  mother.  This  is  in  marked  contrast 
to  the  usual  treatment  of  the  mother  of  an  illegiti- 
mate child,  who  even  when  the  paternity  of  her 
child  is  acknowledged  receives  from  the  father 
but  a pitiful  sum  for  its  support;  moreover,  if 
the  child  dies  before  birth  and  the  mother  con- 
ceals this  fact,  although  perfectly  guiltless  of 
its  death,  she  can  be  sent  to  jail  for  a year. 

The  age  of  consent  is  eighteen  years  in  all 
of  the  states  in  which  women  have  had  the 
ballot,  although  in  only  eight  of  the  others 

it  so  high.  In  the  majority  of  the  latter 
the  age  of  consent  is  between  fourteen  and  six- 
teen, and  in  some  of  them  it  is  as  low  as  ten. 
These  legal  regulations  persist  in  spite  of  the 
well-known  fact  that  the  mass  of  girls  enter  a 
disreputable  life  below  the  age  of  eighteen.  In 
equal  suffrage  states  important  issues  regarding 
women  and  children,  whether  of  the  sweat-shop 
or  the  brothel,  have  always  brought  out  the 
women  voters  in  great  numbers. 

Certainly  enfranchised  women  would  offer 
some  protection  to  the  white  slaves  themselves 


194 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


who  are  tolerated  and  segregated,  but  who, 
because  their  very  existence  is  illegal,  may  be 
arrested  whenever  any  police  captain  chooses, 
may  be  brought  before  a magistrate,  fined  and 
imprisoned.  A woman  so  arrested  may  be 
obliged  to  answer  the  most  harassing  questions 
put  to  her  by  a city  attorney  with  no  other 
woman  near  to  protect  her  from  insult.  She 
may  be  subjected  to  the  most  trying  examinations 
in  the  presence  of  policemen  with  no  matron  to 
whom  to  appeal.  These  things  constantly  hap- 
pen everywhere  save  in  Scandinavian  countries, 
where  juries  of  women  sit  upon  such  cases  and 
offer  the  protection  of  their  presence  to  the 
prisoners.  Without  such  protection  even  an 
innocent  woman,  made  to  appear  a member  of 
this  despised  class,  receives  no  consideration.  A 
girl  of  fifteen  recently  acthag  in  a South  Chicago 
theatre  attracted  the  attention  of  a milkman  who 
gradually  convinced  her  that  he  was  respectable. 
Walkmg  with  him  one  evening  to  the  door  of 
her  lodgmg-house,  the  girl  told  him  of  her  diffi- 
culties and  quite  innocently  accepted  money  for 
the  pajunent  of  her  room  rent.  The  following 
morning  as  she  was  leaving  the  house  the  milkman 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


195 


met  her  at  the  door  and  asked  her  for  the  five 
dollars  he  had  given  her  the  night  before.  When 
she  said  she  had  used  it  to  pay  her  debt  to  the 
landlady,  he  angrily  replied  that  unless  she 
returned  the  money  at  once  he  would  call  a 
policeman  and  arrest  her  on  a charge  of  theft. 
The  girl,  helpless  because  she  had  already  dis- 
posed of  the  money,  was  taken  to  court,  where, 
frightened  and  confused,  she  was  unable  to  give 
a convincing  account  of  the  interview  the  night 
before;  except  for  the  prompt  intervention  on 
the  part  of  a woman,  she  would  either  have  been 
obliged  to  put  herself  in  the  power  of  the  milkman, 
who  offered  to  pay  her  fine,  or  she  would  have 
been  sent  to  the  city  prison,  not  because  the 
proof  of  her  guilt  was  conclusive,  but  because  her 
connection  with  a cheap  theatre  and  the  hour  of 
the  so-called  offence  had  convinced  the  court 
that  she  belonged  to  a class  of  women  who  are 
regarded  as  no  longer  entitled  to  legal  protection. 

Several  years  ago  in  Colorado  the  disreputable 
women  of  Denver  appealed  to  a large  political 
club  of  women  against  the  action  of  the  police 
who  were  forcing  them  to  register  under  the 
threat  of  arrest  in  order  later  to  secure  their 


196 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


votes  for  a corrupt  politician.  The  disreputable 
women,  wishing  to  conceal  their  real  names  and 
addresses,  did  not  want  to  be  registered,  in  this 
respect  at  least  differing  from  the  lodging-house 
men  whose  venal  votes  play  such  an  important 
part  in  every  municipal  election.  The  women’s 
political  club  responded  to  this  appeal,  and  not 
only  stopped  the  coercion,  but  finally  turned  out 
of  ofl&ce  the  chief  of  police  responsible  for  it. 

The  very  fact  that  the  conditions  and  results 
of  the  social  evil  lie  so  far  away  from  the  knowl- 
edge of  good  women  is  largely  responsible  for 
the  secrecy  and  hypocrisy  upon  which  it  thrives. 
Most  good  women  will  probably  never  consent 
to  break  through  their  ignorance  save  under  a 
sense  of  duty  which  has  ever  been  the  incentive 
to  action  to  which  even  timid  women  have 
responded.  At  least  a promising  beginning 
would  be  made  toward  a more  effective  social 
control,  if  the  mass  of  conscientious  women  were 
once  thoroughly  convinced  that  a knowledge  of 
local  vice  conditions  was  a matter  of  ciwc  obliga- 
tion, if  the  entire  body  of  conventional  women, 
simply  because  they  held  the  franchise,  felt  con- 
strained to  inform  themselves  concerning  the 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


197 


social  evil  throughout  the  cities  of  America. 
Perhaps  the  most  immediate  result  would  be 
a change  in  the  attitude  toward  prostitution 
on  the  part  of  elected  officials,  responding  to 
that  of  their  constituency.  Although  good  and 
bad  men  alike  prize  chastity  in  women,  and 
although  good  men  require  it  of  themselves, 
almost  all  men  are  convinced  that  it  is  impossible 
to  require  it  of  thousands  of  their  fellow-citizens, 
and  hence  connive  at  the  policy  of  the  officials 
who  permit  commercialized  vice  to  flourish. 

As  the  first  organized  Women’s  Rights  move- 
ment was  inaugurated  by  the  women  who  were 
refused  seats  in  the  world’s  Anti-Slavery  conven- 
tion held  in  London  in  1840,  although  they  had 
been  the  very  pioneers  in  the  organization  of  the 
American  Abolitionists,  so  it  is  quite  possible 
that  an  equally  energetic  attempt  to  abolish 
white  slavery  will  bring  many  women  into  the 
Equal  Suffrage  movement,  simply  because  they 
too  will  discover  that  without  the  use  of  the 
ballot  they  are  unable  to  work  effectively  for 
the  eradication  of  a social  wrong. 

Women  are  said  to  have  been  historically 
indifferent  to  social  injustices,  but  it  may  be 


198  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

possible  that,  if  they  once  really  comprehend  the 
actual  position  of  prostitutes  the  world  over, 
their  sense  of  justice  will  at  last  be  freed,  and 
become  forevermore  a new  force  in  the  long  strug- 
gle for  social  righteousness.  The  wind  of  moral 
aspiration  now  dies  down  and  now  blows  with 
unexpected  force,  urging  on  the  movements  of 
social  destiny;  but  never  do  the  sails  of  the  ship 
of  state  push  forward  wdth  such  assured  progress 
as  when  filled  by  the  mighty  hopes  of  a newly 
enfranchised  class.  Those  already  responsible 
for  existing  conditions  have  come  to  acquiesce 
in  them,  and  feel  obliged  to  adduce  reasons 
explaining  the  permanence  and  so-called  necessity 
of  the  most  evil  conditions.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  newly  enfranchised  view  existing  conditions 
more  critically,  more  as  human  beings  and  less 
as  politicians. 

After  all,  why  should  the  woman  voter  concur 
in  the  assmnption  that  every  large  city  must 
either  set  aside  well-known  districts  for  the  ac- 
commodation of  prostitution,  as  Chicago  does, 
or  continually  permit  it  to  flourish  in  tenement 
and  apartment  houses,  as  is  done  in  New  York? 
Smaller  communities  and  towns  throughout  the 


'AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


199 


land  are  free  from  at  least  this  semi-legal  organi- 
zation of  it,  and  why  should  it  be  accepted  as  a 
permanent  aspect  of  city  life?  The  valuable 
report  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission  estimates 
that  twenty  thousand  of  the  men  daily  respons- 
ible for  this  evil  in  Chicago  live  outside  of  the 
city.  They  are  the  men  who  come  from  other 
towns  to  Chicago  in  order  to  see  the  sights. 
They  are  supposedly  moral  at  home,  where  they 
are  well  known  and  subjected  to  the  constant 
control  of  public  opinion.  The  report  goes  on 
to  state  that  during  conventions  or  “show” 
occasions  the  business  of  commercialized  vice 
is  enormously  increased.  The  village  gossip 
with  her  vituperative  tongue  after  all  performs 
a valuable  function  both  of  castigation  and 
retribution;  but  her  fellow-townsman,  although 
quite  unconscious  of  her  restraint,  coming  into 
a city  hotel  often  experiences  a great  sense  of 
relief  which  easily  rises  to  a mood  of  exhilaration. 
In  addition  to  this  he  holds  an  exaggerated  notion 
of  the  wickedness  of  the  city.  A visiting  country- 
man is  often  shown  museums  and  questionable 
sights  reserved  largely  for  his  patronage,  just  as 
tourists  are  conducted  to  lurid  Parisian  revels 


200 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


and  indecencies  sustained  primarily  for  their 
horrified  contemplation.  Such  a situation  would 
indicate  that,  because  control  is  much  more 
difficult  in  a large  city  than  in  a small  town, 
the  city  deliberately  provides  for  its  own  inability 
in  this  direction. 

During  a recent  military  encampment  in 
Chicago  large  numbers  of  young  girls  were 
attracted  to  it  by  that  glamour  which  always 
surrounds  the  soldier.  On  the  complaint  of 
several  mothers,  investigators  discovered  that 
the  girls  were  there  without  the  knowledge  of 
their  parents,  some  of  them  having  literally 
climbed  out  of  windows  after  their  parents  had 
supposed  them  asleep.  A thorough  investigation 
disclosed  not  only  an  enormous  increase  of 
business  in  the  restricted  districts,  but  the  down- 
fall of  many  young  girls  who  had  hitherto  been 
thoroughly  respectable  and  able  to  resist  the 
ordinary  temptations  of  city  life,  but  who  had 
completely  lost  their  heads  over  the  glitter  of  a 
military  camp.  One  young  girl  was  seen  by  an 
investigator  in  the  late  evening , hurrying  away 
from  the  camp.  She  was  so  absorbed  in  her 
trouble  and  so  blinded  by  her  tears  that  she  fairly 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


201 


ran  against  hinx  and  he  heard  her  praying,  as 
she  frantically  clutched  the  beads  around  her 
neck,  “Oh,  Mother  of  God,  what  have  I done! 
What  have  I done!”  The  Chicago  encampment 
was  finally  brought  under  control  through  the 
combined  efforts  of  the  park  commissioners, 
the  city  police,  and  the  military  authorities, 
but  not  without  a certain  resentment  from  the 
last  toward  “civilian  interference.”  Such  an  en- 
campment may  be  regarded  as  an  historic  sur- 
vival representing  the  standing  armies  sustained 
in  Europe  since  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
These  large  bodies  of  men,  deprived  of  domestic 
life,  have  always  afforded  centres  in  which  con- 
tempt for  the  chastity  of  women  has  been  fostered. 
The  older  centres  of  militarism  have  established 
prophylactic  measures  designed  to  protect  the 
health  of  the  soldiers,  but  evince  no  concern  for 
the  fate  of  the  ruined  women.  It  is  a matter  of 
recent  history  that  Josephine  Butler  and  the 
men  and  women  associated  with  her,  subjected 
themselves  to  unspeakable  insult  for  eight  years 
before  they  finally  induced  the  English  Parlia- 
ment to  repeal  the  infamous  Contagious  Disease 
Acts  relating  to  the  garrison  towns  of  Great 


202 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


Britain,  through  which  the  government  itself 
not  only  permitted  vice,  but  legally  provided 
for  it  within  certain  specified  limits. 

The  primary  difficulty  of  military  life  lies  in 
the  withdrawal  of  large  numbers  of  men  from 
normal  family  life,  and  hence  from  the  domestic 
restraints  and  social  checks  which  are  operative 
upon  the  mass  of  human  beings.  The  great 
peace  propagandas  have  emphasized  the  unjusti- 
fiable expense  involved  in  the  maintenance  of 
the  standing  armies  of  Europe,  the  social  waste 
in  the  withdrawal  of  thousands  of  young  men 
from  industrial,  commercial  and  professional  pur- 
suits into  the  barren  negative  life  of  the  bar- 
racks. They  might  go  further  and  lay  stress  upon 
the  loss  of  moral  sensibility,  the  destruction 
of  romantic  love,  the  perversion  of  the  longing 
for  \vife  and  child.  The  very  stability  and  re- 
finement of  the  social  order  depend  upon  the 
preservation  of  these  basic  emotions. 

Social  customs  are  instituted  so  slowly  and 
even  imperceptibly,  so  far  as  the  conforming 
individual  is  concerned,  that  the  mass  of  men 
submit  to  control  in  spite  of  themselves,  and  it 
is  therefore  always  diflScult  to  determine  how 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


203 


far  the  average  upright  living  is  the  result  of 
external  props,  until  they  are  suddenly  with  drawn. 
This  is  especially  true  of  domestic  life.  Even 
the  sordid  marriages  in  which  the  senses  have 
forestalled  the  heart  almost  always  end  in  some 
form  of  family  affection.  The  young  couple  who 
may  have  been  brought  together  in  marriage 
upon  the  most  primitive  plane,  after  twenty 
years  of  hard  work  in  meagre,  unlovely  surround- 
ings, in  spite  of  stupidity  and  many  mistakes, 
in  the  face  of  failure  and  even  wrongdoing,  will 
have  unfolded  lives  of  unassuming  affection 
and  family  devotion  to  a group  of  children. 
They  will  have  faithfully  fulfilled  that  obligation 
which  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  majority  of  men 
and  women,  with  its  high  rewards  and  painful 
sacrifices.  These  rewards  as  well  as  the  restraints 
of  family  life  are  denied  to  the  soldier.  A some- 
what similar  situation  is  foimd  in  every  large 
construction  camp,  and  in  the  crowded  city 
tenements  occupied  by  thousands  of  immi- 
grant men  who  have  preceded  their  families  to 
Anierica. 

In  the  light  of  the  history  of  prostitution  in 
relation  to  militarism,  nothing  could  be  more 


204  A new  conscience  and 

absurd  than  the  familiar  statement  that  virtuous 
women  could  not  safely  walk  the  streets  unless 
opportunity  for  secret  vice  were  offered  to  the 
men  of  the  city.  It  is  precisely  the  men  who  have 
not  submitted  to  self-control  who  are  dangerous 
and  they  only,  as  the  court  records  themselves 
make  clear. 

In  addition  to  the  large  social  movements  for  the 
betterment  of  Public  Health,  for  the  establishment 
of  Temperance,  for  the  promotion  of  Equal  Suf- 
frage, and  for  the  hastening  of  Peace  and  Arbitra- 
tion is  the  world- wide  organization  and  active  prop- 
aganda of  International  Socialism.  It  has  always 
included  the  abolition  of  this  ancient  evil  in  its 
program  of  social  reconstruction,  and  since  the 
publication  of  Bebel’s  great  book,  nearly  thirty 
years  ago,  the  leaders  of  the  Socialist  party  have 
never  ceased  to  discuss  the  economics  of  prosti- 
tution with  its  psychological  and  moral  resultants. 
The  Socialists  contend  that  commercialized  vice 
is  fundamentally  a question  of  poverty,  a by- 
product of  despair,  which  will  disappear  only 
with  the  abolition  of  poverty  itself;  that  it 
persists  not  primarily  from  inherent  weakness 
in  human  nature,  but  is  a vice  arising  from  a 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


205 


defective  organization  of  social  life;  that  with  a 
reorganization  of  society,  at  least  all  of  prosti- 
tution which  is  founded  upon  the  hunger  of  the 
victims  and  upon  the  profits  of  the  traffickers, 
will  disappear. 

Whether  we  are  Socialists  or  not,  we  will  all 
admit  that  every  level  of  culture  breeds  its  own 
particular  brand  of  vice  and  uncovers  new 
weaknesses  as  well  as  new  nobilities  in  human 
nature;  that  a given  social  development — such, 
for  instance  as  the  conditions  of  life  for  thousands 
of  young  people  in  crowded  city  quarters — may 
produce  such  temptations  and  present  such 
snares  to  virtue,  that  average  human  nature 
cannot  withstand  them. 

The  very  fact  that  the  existence  of  the  social 
evil  is  semi-legal  in  large  cities  is  an  admission 
that  our  individual  morality  is  so  uncertain 
that  it  breaks  down  when  social  control  is  with- 
drawn and  the  opportunity  for  secrecy  is  offered. 
The  situation  indicates  either  that  the  best  con- 
science of  the  community  fails  to  translate  itself 
into  civic  action  or  that  our  cities  are  too  large 
to  be  civilized  in  a social  sense.  These  difficulties 
have  been  enormously  augmented  during  the 


206 


'A  NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


past  century  so  marked  by  the  rapid  growth  of 
cities,  because  the  great  principle  of  liberty  has 
been  translated  not  only  into  the  unlovely  doc- 
trine of  commercial  competition,  but  also  has 
fostered  in  many  men  the  belief  that  personal 
development  necessitates  a rebellion  against 
existing  social  laws.  To  the  opportunity  for 
secrecy  which  the  modem  city  offers,  such  men 
are  able  to  add  a high-sounding  justification 
for  their  immoralities.  Fortunately,  however,  for 
our  moral  progress,  the  specious  and  illegitimate 
theories  of  freedom  are  constantly  being  chal- 
lenged, and  a new  form  of  social  control  is  slowly 
establishing  itself  on  the  principle,  so  widespread 
in  contemporary  government,  that  the  state 
has  a responsibility  for  conditions  which  deter- 
mine the  health  and  welfare  of  its  own  members; 
that  it  is  in  the  interest  of  social  progress  itself 
that  hard-won  liberties  must  be  restrained  by 
the  demonstrable  needs  of  society. 

This  new  and  more  vigorous  development  of 
social  control,  while  refiecting  something  of  that 
wholesome  fear  of  public  opinion  which  the 
intimacies  of  a small  community  maintain,  is 
much  more  closely  allied  to  the  old  communal 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


207 


restraints  and  mutual  protections  to  which  the 
human  will  first  yielded.  Although  this  new 
control  is  based  upon  the  voluntary  co-operation 
of  self-directed  individuals,  in  contrast  to  the 
forced  submission  that  characterized  the  older 
forms  of  social  restraint,  nevertheless  in  predict- 
ing the  establishment  of  adequate  social  control 
over  the  instinct  which  the  modern  novelists  so 
often  describe  as  '‘uncontrollable,”  there  is  a 
certain  sanction  in  this  old  and  well-nigh  forgotten 
history. 

The  most  superficial  student  of  social  cus- 
toms quickly  discovers  the  practically  unlim- 
ited extent  to  which  public  opinion  has  always 
regulated  marriage.  If  the  traditions  of  one 
tribe  were  endogamous,  all  the  men  dutifully 
married  within  it;  but  if  the  customs  of  another 
decreed  that  wives  must  be  secured  by  capture 
or  purchase,  all  the  men  of  that  tribe  fared  forth 
in  order  to  secure  their  mates.  From  the  primi- 
tive Australian  who  obtains  his  wives  in  exchange 
for  his  sisters  or  daughters,  and  never  dreams  of 
obtaining  them  in  any  other  way,  to  the  sophisti- 
cated yoimg  Frenchman,  who  without  objection 
marries  the  bride  his  careful  parents  select  for 


208  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

him;  from  the  ancient  Hebrew,  who  contentedly 
married  the  widow  of  his  deceased  brother  be- 
cause it  was  according  to  the  law,  to  the  modern 
Englishman  who  refused  to  marry  his  deceased 
■wdfe’s  sister  because  the  law  forbade  it,  the  entire 
pathway  of  the  so-called  uncontrollable  instinct 
has  been  gradually  confined  between  carefully 
clipped  hedges  and  has  steadily  led  up  to  a house 
of  conventional  domesticity.  Men  have  fallen 
in  love  with  their  cousins  or  declined  to  fall  in 
love  with  them,  very  much  as  custom  declared 
marriages  between  cousins  to  be  desirable  or 
undesirable,  as  they  formerly  married  their  sis- 
ters and  later  absolutely  ceased  to  desire  to 
marry  them.  In  fact,  regulation  of  this  great 
primitive  instinct  goes  back  of  the  human  race 
itself.  All  the  higher  tribes  of  monkeys  are 
strictly  monogamous,  and  many  species  of  birds 
are  faithful  to  one  mate,  season  after  season.  Ac- 
cording to  the  great  authority,  Forel,  prostitution 
never  became  established  among  primitive  peo- 
ples. Even  savage  tribes  designated  the  age 
at  which  their  young  men  were  permitted  to 
assume  paternity  because  feeble  children  were  a 
drag  upon  their  communal  resources.  As  primi- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


209 


tive  control  lessened  with  the  disappearance  of 
tribal  organization  and  later  of  the  patriarchal 
family,  a social  control,  not  less  binding,  was 
slowly  established,  until  throughout  the  centuries, 
in  spite  of  many  rebellious  individuals,  the  mass 
of  men  have  lived  according  to  the  dictates  of 
the  church,  the  legal  requirements  of  the  state, 
and  the  surveillance  of  the  community,  if  only 
because  they  feared  social  ostracism.  It  is 
easy,  however,  to  forget  these  men  and  their 
prosaic  virtues  because  history  has  so  long  busied 
herself  in  recording  court  amours  and  the  gentle 
dalliances  of  the  overlord. 

The  great  primitive  instinct,  so  responsive  to 
social  control  as  to  be  almost  an  example  of 
social  docility,  has  apparently  broken  with  all 
the  restraints  and  decencies  under  two  condi- 
tions: first  and  second,  when  the  individual  felt 
that  he  was  above  social  control  and  when  the 
individual  has  had  an  opportunity  to  hide  his 
daily  living.  Prostitution  upon  a commercial 
basis  in  a measure  embraces  the  two  conditions, 
for  it  becomes  possible  only  in  a society  so  highly 
complicated  that  social  control  may  be  success- 
fully evaded  and  the  individual  thus  feels  supe- 


210 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


rior  to  it.  When  a city  is  so  large  that  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  fix  individual  responsibility, 
that  which  for  centuries  was  considered  the 
luxury  of  the  king  comes  within  the  reach  of 
every  office-boy,  and  that  lack  of  community 
control  which  belonged  only  to  the  overlord  who 
felt  himself  superior  to  the  standards  of  the 
people,  may  be  seized  upon  by  any  city  dweller 
who  can  evade  his  acquaintances.  Against 
such  moral  aggression,  the  old  types  of  social 
control  are  powerless. 

Fortunately,  the  same  crowded  city  conditions 
which  make  moral  isolation  possible,  constantly 
tend  to  develop  a new  restraint  founded  upon  the 
mutual  dependences  of  city  life  and  its  daily 
necessities.  The  city  itself  socializes  the  very 
instruments  that  constitute  the  apparatus  of 
social  control — Law,  Publicity,  Literature,  Edu- 
cation and  Religion.  Through  their  sociahzation, 
the  desirability  of  chastity,  which  has  hitherto 
been  a matter  of  individual  opinion  and  decision, 
comes  to  be  regarded,  not  only  as  a personal 
virtue  indispensable  in  women  and  desirable 
in  men,  but  as  a great  basic  requirement  which 
society  has  learned  to  demand  because  it  has 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


211 


been  proven  necessary  for  human  welfare. 
To  the  individual  restraints  is  added  the  con- 
viction of  social  responsibility  and  the  whole 
determination  of  chastity  is  reinforced  by  social 
sanctions.  Such  a shifting  to  social  grounds  is 
already  obviously  taking  place  in  regard  to  the 
chastity  of  women.  Formerly  all  that  the  best 
woman  possessed  was  a negative  chastity  which 
had  been  carefully  guarded  by  her  parents  and 
duennas.  The  chastity  of  the  modern  woman 
of  self-directed  activity  and  of  a varied  circle 
of  interests,  which  gives  her  an  acquaintance 
with  many  men  as  well  as  women,  has  therefore 
a new  value  and  importance  in  the  establishment 
of  social  standards.  There  was  a certain  basis 
for  the  belief  that  if  a woman  lost  her  personal 
virtue,  she  lost  all;  when  she  had  no  activity 
outside  of  domestic  life,  the  situation  itself 
afforded  a foundation  for  the  belief  that  a man 
might  claim  praise  for  his  public  career  even  when 
his  domestic  life  was  corrupt.  As  woman,  however, 
fulfills  her  civic  obligations  while  still  guarding 
her  chastity,  she  will  be  in  position  as  never  be- 
fore to  uphold  the  “single  standard,  ” demanding 
that  men  shall  add  the  personal  virtues  to  their 


212  'A  NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

performance  of  public  duties.  Women  may  at 
last  force  men  to  do  away  with  the  traditional 
use  of  a public  record  as  a cloak  for  a 
wretched  private  character,  because  society  will 
never  permit  a woman  to  make  such  excuses  for 
herself. 

Every  movement  therefore  which  tends  to 
increase  woman’s  share  of  civic  responsibility 
undoubtedly  forecasts  the  time  when  a social 
control  will  be  extended  over  men,  similar  to 
the  historic  one  so  long  established  over  women. 
As  that  modern  relationship  between  men  and 
women,  which  the  Romans  called  “virtue  between 
equals”  increases,  while  it  will  continue  to  make 
women  freer  and  nobler,  less  timid  of  reputation 
and  more  human,  will  also  inevitably  modify 
the  standards  of  men. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that  this 
new  freedom  from  domestic  and  community 
control,  with  the  opportunity  for  escaping  obser- 
vation which  the  city  affords,  is  often  utilized 
unworthily  by  women.  The  report  of  the  Chi- 
cago vice  commission  tells  of  numerous  girls 
living  in  small  cities  and  country  towns,  who 
come  to  Chicago  from  time  to  time  under  arrange- 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


213 


ments  made  with  the  landlady  of  a seemingly  re- 
spectable apartment.  They  remain  long  enough 
to  earn  money  for  a spring  or  fall  wardrobe 
and  return  to  their  home  towns,  where  their 
acquaintances  are  quite  without  suspicion  of 
the  methods  they  have  employed  to  secure  the 
much-admired  costumes  brought  from  the  city. 
Often  an  unattached  country  girl,  who  has  come 
to  live  in  a city,  has  gradually  fallen  into  a 
vicious  life  from  sheer  lack  of  social  restraint. 
Such  a girl,  when  living  in  a smaller  community, 
realized  that  good  behavior  was  a protective 
measure  and  that  any  suspicion  of  immorality 
would  quickly  ruin  her  social  standing;  but 
when  removed  from  such  surveillance,  she  hopes 
to  be  able  to  pass  from  her  regular  life  to  an 
irregular  one  and  back  again  before  the  fact 
has  been  noted,  quite  as  many  young  men  are 
trying  to  do. 

Perhaps  no  young  woman  is  more  exposed  to 
temptation  of  this  sort  than  the  one  who  works 
in  an  office  where  she  may  be  the  sole  woman 
employed  and  where  the  relation  to  her  employer 
and  to  her  fellow-clerks  is  almost  on  a social 
basis.  Many  office  girls  have  taken  “business 


214  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

courses”  in  their  native  towns  and  have  come 
to  the  city  in  search  of  the  large  salaries  which 
have  no  parallels  at  home.  Such  a position  is 
not  only  new  to  the  individual,  but  it  is  so  recent 
an  outcome  of  modem  business  methods,  that 
it  has  not  yet  been  conventionalized.  The  girl 
is  without  the  wholesome  social  restraint  afforded 
by  the  companionship  of  other  working-women 
and  her  isolation  in  itself  constitutes  a danger. 
An  investigation  disclosed  that  a startling  number 
of  Chicago  girls  had  found  their  positions  through 
advertisements  and  had  no  means  of  ascertaining 
the  respectability  of  their  employers.  In  addi- 
tion to  this,  the  girls  who  seek  such  positions  are 
sometimes  vain  and  pretentious,  and  will  take 
any  sort  of  office  work  because  it  seems  to  them 
“more  ladylike.”  A girl  of  this  sort  came  to 
Chicago  from  the  country  three  years  ago  at 
the  age  of  seventeen  and  secured  a position  as  a 
stenographer  with  a large  firm  of  lawyers.  She 
was  pretty  and  attractive,  and  in  her  desire  to 
see  more  of  the  wonderful  city  to  which  she  had 
come,  she  accepted  many  invitations  to  din- 
ners and  theatres  from  a younger  member  of  the 
firm.  The  other  girls  in  the  ofiice,  representing 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


215 


the  more  capable  type  of  business  women,  among 
whom  a careful  code  of  conduct  is  developing, 
although  at  present  it  is  often  manifested  only 
by  the  social  ostracism  of  the  one  of  their  num- 
ber who  has  broken  the  conventions,  protested 
against  her  conduct,  first  to  the  girl  and  then  to 
the  head  of  the  office.  The  usual  story  developed 
rapidly,  the  girl  lost  her  position,  her  brother-in- 
law,  learning  the  cause,  refused  her  a home  and 
she  became  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  man. 
As  their  relations  became  notorious,  he  at  length 
was  requested  to  withdraw  from  the  firm.  When 
brought  to  my  knowledge  she  had  already  been 
deserted  for  a year.  The  only  people  she  had 
known  during  that  time  were  those  in  the  dis- 
reputable hotel  in  which  she  had  been  liviug 
when  her  lover  disappeared,  and  it  was  through 
their  mistaken  kindness  in  makiug  an  opportu- 
nity for  her  in  the  only  life  with  which  they  were 
familar,  that  she  had  been  drawn  into  the  worst 
vice  of  the  city. 

She  was  but  one  of  thousands  of  young  women 
whose  undisciplined  minds  are  fatally  assailed 
by  the  subtleties  and  sophistries  of  city  life, 
and  who  have  lost  their  bearings  in  the  midst  of 


216  A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 

a multitude  of  new  imaginative  impressions. 
It  is  hard  for  a girl,  thrilled  by  the  mere  propin- 
quity of  city  excitements  and  eager  to  s^re 
them,  to  keep  to  the  gray  and  monotonous  path 
of  regular  work.  Almost  every  such  girl  of  the 
hundreds  who  have  come  to  grief,  “begins”  by 
accepting  invitations  to  dinners  and  places  of 
amusement.  She  is  always  impressed  with  the 
ease  for  concealment  which  the  city  affords, 
although  at  the  same  time  vaguely  resentful 
that  it  is  so  indifferent  to  her  individual  ex- 
istence. It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  amount 
of  clandestine  prostitution  which  the  modem  city 
contains,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  growth 
of  the  social  evil  at  the  present  moment,  lies  in 
this  direction.  Another  of  its  less  sinister  de- 
velopments is  perhaps  a contemporary  mani- 
festation of  that  break,  long  considered  neces- 
sary, between  established  morality  and  artistic 
freedom  represented  by  the  hetaira  in  Athens, 
the  gifted  actress  in  Paris,  the  geisha  in 
Japan.  Insofar  as  such  women  have  been 
treated  as  independent  human  beings  and 
prized  for  their  mental  and  social  charm, 
even  although  they  are  on  a commercial  basis. 


BLN  ANCIENT  EVIL  217 

it  makes  for  a humanization  of  this  most 
sordid  business.  Such  open  manifestations  of 
prostitution  hasten  social  control,  because  pub- 
licity has  ever  been  the  first  step  toward 
community  imderstanding  and  discipline. 

Doubtless  the  attitude  toward  the  victims  of 
commercialized  vice  will  be  modified  by  many 
reactions  upon  the  public  consciousness,  through 
a thousand  manifestations  of  the  great  democratic 
movement  which  is  developing  all  about  us. 
Certainly  we  are  safe  in  predicting  that  when 
the  solidarity  of  human  interest  is  actually 
realized,  it  will  become  unthinkable  that  one 
class  of  human  beings  should  be  sacrificed  to  the 
supposed  needs  of  another;  when  the  rights  of 
human  life  have  successfully  asserted  themselves 
in  contrast  to  the  rights  of  property,  it  will 
become  impossible  to  sell  the  young  and  heedless 
into  degradation.  An  age  marked  by  its  vigorous 
protests  against  slavery  and  class  tyranny,  will 
not  continue  to  ignore  the  multitudes  of  women 
who  are  held  in  literal  bondage;  nor  will  an  age 
characterized  by  a new  tenderness  for  the  losers 
in  life’s  race,  always  persist  in  denying  forgiveness 
to  the  woman  who  has  lost  all.  A voice  which 


218 


A NEW  CONSCIENCE  AND 


has  come  across  the  centuries,  filled  with  pity 
for  her  who  has  “sinned  much,”  must  at  last 
be  joined  by  the  forgiving  voices  of  others,  to 
whom  it  has  been  revealed  that  it  is  hardness 
of  heart  which  has  ever  thwarted  the  divine 
purposes  of  religion.  A generation  which  has 
gone  through  so  many  successive  revolts  against 
commercial  aggression  and  lawlessness,  will  at 
last  lead  one  more  revolt  on  behalf  of  the  young 
girls  who  are  the  victims  of  the  basest  and  vilest 
commercialism.  As  that  consciousness  of  human 
suffering,  which  already  hangs  like  a black  cloud 
over  thousands  of  our  more  sensitive  contempo- 
raries, increases  in  poignancy,  it  must  finally 
include  the  women  who  for  so  many  generations 
have  received  neither  pity  nor  consideration; 
as  the  sense  of  justice  fast  widens  to  encircle 
all  human  relations,  it  must  at  length  reach  the 
women  who  have  so  long  been  judged  without  a 
hearing. 

In  that  vast  and  checkered  undertaking  of  its 
own  moralization  to  which  the  human  race  is 
committed,  it  must  constantly  free  itself  from  the 
survivals  and  savage  infections  of  the  primitive 
life  from  which  it  started.  Now  one  and  then 


AN  ANCIENT  EVIL 


219 


ano\ier  of  the  ancient  wrongs  and  uncouth 
customs  which  have  been  so  long  familiar  as  to 
seem  inevitable,  rise  to  the  moral  consciousness 
of  a passing  generation;  first  for  uneasy  contem- 
plation and  then  for  gallant  correction. 

May  America  bear  a valiant  part  in  this  inter- 
national crusade  of  the  compassionate,  enlist- 
ing under  its  banner  not  only  those  sensitive 
to  the  wrongs  of  others,  but  those  conscious  of 
the  destruction  of  the  race  itself,  who  form  the 
standing  army  of  humanity’s  self-pity,  which  is 
becoming  slowly  mobilized  for  a new  conquest! 


1 

i 


'^HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of 
a few  of  the  Macmillan  books  by  the  same 
author  and  on  kindred  subjects. 


Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House 

With  Autobiographical  Notes  by  Jane  Addams 

Illustrated,  cloth,  $2.50  net  (carriage  extra) 

“Jane  Addams,  of  Chicago,  is  a marvellous  woman.  She  has  made 
Hull  House  in  Chicago  famous  the  world  over  as  a practical  manifesta- 
tion of  the  spirit  of  ‘good  will  on  earth,’  sincere,  earnest,  and  best  of  all, 
unpatronizing.  It  meets  the  poor  and  the  unfortunate  with  the  hand- 
clasp of  a friend.” — Cleveland  Leader. 

“All  persons  interested  in  either  the  theoretical  or  the  practical  aspects 
of  the  social  movement  welcome  a book  from  the  pen  of  Jane  Addams.” — 
Review  and  Expositor. 

The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net;  by  mail,  $1.33 

“ ‘The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets’  shows  such  sanity,  such 
breadth  and  tolerance  of  mind,  and  such  philosophic  penetration  into 
the  inner  meanings  of  outward  phenomena  as  to  make  it  a book  which 
no  one  who  cares  seriously  about  its  subject  can  afford  to  miss.” — 
New  York  Times. 

The  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace 

Half  leather,  xxiii  + 243  pages,  i2mo,  $1.25  net;  by  mail,  $1.35 

“It  is  given  to  but  few  people  to  have  the  rare  combination  of  power 
of  insight  and  of  interpretation  possessed  by  Miss  Addams.  The 
present  book  shows  the  same  fresh  virile  thought,  and  the  happy  ex- 
pression which  has  characterized  her  work.  . . . There  is  nothing  of 
namby-pamby  sentimentalism  in  Miss  Addams’s  idea  of  the  peace  move- 
ment. The  volume  is  most  inspiring  and  deserves  wide  recognition.” 
— Annals  of  the  American  Academy. 

“No  brief  summary  can  do  justice  to  Miss  Addams’s  grasp  of  the 
facts,  her  insight  into  their  meaning,  her  incisive  estimate  of  the  strength 
and  weakness  alike  of  practical  politicians  and  spasmodic  reformers, 
her  sensible  suggestions  as  to  woman’s  place  in  our  municipal  house- 
keeping, her  buoyant  yet  practical  optimism.” — Examiner. 

Democracy  and  Social  Ethics 

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‘boss’  as  he  thrives  to-day  in  our  great  cities  has  ever  been  written  than 
is  contained  in  Miss  Addams’s  chapter  on  ‘Political  Reform.’  . . . 
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Making  Both  Ends  Meet 

The  Income  and  Outlay  of  Ne<w  York  Working  Girls 
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The  girl  who,  without  friends  or  home,  is  obliged  to  earn  her  living  in  a 
big  city,  faces  a very  real  problem.  Various  phases  of  this  problem  have 
been  dealt  with  by  philanthropic,  social  and  religious  workers  and 
writers,  but  the  solution  is  seemingly  as  far  away  as  ever.  Though 
there  are  many  homes  and  organizations  of  a semi-charitable  nature  in 
all  our  large  cities,  these  really  can  care  for  and  watch  over  but  a small 
per  cent  of  the  working-girl  population.  Those  who  for  one  reason 
or  another  do  not  come  within  the  radius  of  these  institutions  must  shift 
entirely  for  themselves.  These  are  the  subjects  of  Mrs.  Clark  and  Miss 
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Socialism  and  the  Ethics  of  Jesus 

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thorough  examination  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  present-day 
socialism;  and  an  inquiry  as  to  how  far  and  in  what  respects  these  princi- 
ples correspond  to  the  ethics  of  Jesus  or  differ  from  them. 

The  Moral  and  Religious  Challenge  of 
Our  Times 

By  HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING 

President  of  Oberlin  College 

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understanding  of  the  difiicidties  that  are  to  be  disposed  of,  as  well  as 
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proached.”— Knickerbocker  Press. 


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Some  Ethical  Gains  Through  Legislation 

By  FLORENCE  KELLEY 

Secretary  of  the  National  Consumers’  League 

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State  of  Illinois  and  for  the  Federal  Government  in  investigating  the 
circumstances  of  the  poorer  classes,  and  conditions  in  various  trades. 

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Professor  of  Sociology  in  Adelphi  College 

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in  different  parts  of  the  country.  The  author  visited  the  shoe  shops, 
and  the  paper,  cotton,  and  woollen  mills  of  New  England,  the  department 
stores  of  Chicago,  the  garment-maker’s  homes  in  New  York,  the  silk 
mills  and  potteries  of  New  Jersey,  the  fruit  farms  of  California,  the 
coal  fields  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  hop  industries  of  Oregon.  The 
author  calls  for  legislation  regardless  of  constitutional  quibble,  for  a 
shorter  work-day,  a higher  wage,  the  establishment  of  residential  clubs, 
the  closer  cooperation  between  existing  organizations  for  industrial 
betterment. ’ ’ — Boston  A dvertiser. 

Social  Reform  and  the  Constitution 

By  FRANK  J.  GOODNOW 

Eaton  Professor  of  Administrative  Law  at  Columbia  University 

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the  whole  question  of  constitutional  interpretation,  especially  as  regards 
the  limits  of  the  constitution  on  the  functions  of  federal  government, 
he  has  proved  that  he  is  a man  of  acute  and  powerful  mind  possessed 
of  the  faculties  of  lucid  and  comprehensive  statement. 


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